Literally "bone-tooth-horn" referring to the controversial tool "technology" of some early hominids. When there is no sign that a people used wood or stone for tools and when it is supposed that that people did make tools of bones teeth and horns their culture is said to be osteodontokeratic. The term is based on an assemblage of fossilized animal bones found at Taung by Raymond Arthur Dart in South Africa where the first specimen of Australopithecus africanus was found and at Makapansgat where other specimens of A. africanus were found. Dart proposed that these fossils were tools used by A.africanus an early hominid species. He postulated that teeth were used as saws and scrapers long bones as clubs and so on. He explained his theory on the basis of the fact that certain bones turned up regularly while others were rarely found. Later research however cast doubt on the general interpretation of altered bone-remains as tools. More likely the accumulation studied by Dart resulted from the natural breakdown of skeletons predators and damage to the bones by falling stones.
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