The Taung Child (or Taung Baby) is the fossilised skull of a young Australopithecus africanus. It was discovered in 1924 by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa. Raymond Dart described it as a new species in the journal Nature in 1925. The Taung skull is in repository at the University of Witwatersrand. Dean Falk, a specialist in brain evolution, has called it "the most important anthropological fossil of the twentieth century."
For more information, click here. Or, Try these sources:
- Brain, C.K. (2003), "Raymond Dart and our African Origins", in Laura Garwin and Tim Lincoln, eds., A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World, pp. 3–9. Can be read here.
- Dart, Raymond A. (1925), "Australopithecus africanus: The Man-Ape of South Africa", Nature, 115: 195–99, doi:10.1038/115195a0.
- (1929), Australopithecus africanus: And His Place in Human Nature, Unpublished manuscript in the University of Witwatersrand archives.