Discovery of Taung Child

The Taung Child is the fossilised skull of a young hominin, found in 1924 in a limestone quarry at Taung in South Africa. It came to the attention of the anatomist Raymond Dart at the University of the Witwatersrand, who described it in the journal Nature in 1925 and named it Australopithecus africanus, the southern ape of Africa. Dart argued that the skull, with its small brain but human-like teeth and the position of the opening for the spinal cord, showed an early human ancestor. Most scientists at the time rejected the claim, because they expected the earliest humans to have large brains and to be found in Asia or Europe. Later finds, notably by Robert Broom, confirmed Dart, and the child is now thought to be about three million years old.

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