Key facts
- Catalog number span no
- Taung 1
- Common name
- Taung Child
- Species
- Australopithecus africanus
- Age
- ~2.8 mya ; 3.3 years when deceased
- Place discovered
- Taung , South Africa
- Discovered by
- Raymond Dart
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- skull
- Image
- Taung child (Frankfurt am Main) 1-EditMylius.jpg
Show 5 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Raymond Dart
- inception
- 2000000-00
- time of discovery or invention
- 1924-11-28
- Commons category
- Taung Child
- nomenclatural type of
- Australopithecus africanus
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Taung Child (or Taung Baby) is the fossilised skull of a young Australopithecus africanus. It was discovered in Taung, South Africa in 1924 and described as a new species by Raymond Dart in 1925. The skull was one of the first early hominin fossils to be found in Africa, and the first evidence that humanity originated from the continent.
The Taung skull is in repository at the University of the Witwatersrand. Dean Falk, a specialist in brain evolution, has called it "the most important anthropological fossil of the twentieth century."
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Taung Child” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.