A doctor and surgeon by training, Raymond A. Dart was drawn into the field of anthropology early in his career, abandoning plans to become a medical missionary in China. Shortly after beginning his academic career in South Africa, and partly out of necessity, Dart was to discover the first fossils of Australopithecus africanus, or "southern ape of Africa," forging the modern era of paleoanthropology.

Raymond Arthur Dart was born to Samuel Dart, a general store operator, and the former Eliza Anne Brimblecombe, on February 4, 1893, the fifth of nine children. Devout Baptists and pioneers in the settlement of Queensland, Australia, Dart's parents raised him in the Brisbane suburb of Toowong, later moving the family to a bush farm in Blenheim, where the future scientist spent his youth milking cows and hiking to school. In 1911, scholarship in hand, he entered Brisbane's newly founded University of Queensland, where he earned both...