A doctor and surgeon by training, Raymond A. Dart discovered 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. In 1911, on a scholarship, Dart attended Brisbane's newly founded University of Queensland, where he earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in biology. Another scholarship sent him in 1914 to St. Andrew's College at the University of Sydney, where, before the completion of his second year of medical studies, he was appointed as a tutor in biology and granted membership on the college staff. That year, Dart attended...