Taung Child and Australopithecus africanus
Niño de Taung y Australopithecus africanus
- Date
- 1924-1925 · confidence high
- Place
- Taung, North West, South Africa
- Credited to
- Raymond Dart (University of the Witwatersrand)
- People
- 👤 Raymond Dart1893–1988
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
A child's skull with a natural endocranial cast, small-brained but with the spine positioned for bipedalism. It was the first australopithecine described, and it pointed to Africa as the cradle of humankind.
Dart published it in Nature (1925); the British scientific community, influenced by the Piltdown fraud, rejected it until the late 1940s.
What it led to
- the search for hominins in Africa
- acceptance that bipedalism preceded large brains
- the finds at Sterkfontein and Swartkrans