Taung Child

The Taung Child is the fossil skull and partial face of a young Australopithecus africanus, discovered in South Africa in 1924 and described by Raymond Dart.

Raymond Dart: Raymond Dart was an Australian anatomist who identified and named Australopithecus africanus from the Taung fossil. Dart recognized the fossil as a human relative and published its description in 1925.
Hominin: A hominin is a human or an extinct species more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees. The Taung Child is an early fossil representative of the hominin lineage.
Out of Africa theory: The Out of Africa theory holds that humans and major stages of human evolution originated in Africa. Dart argued that the Taung fossil supported Africa as a key setting of human evolution.
Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis): Lucy is a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Lucy provides a later, much more complete australopith comparison to the Taung skull.
Taung: Taung is a town in South Africa near the site where the Taung Child fossil was found. The fossil takes its name from the South African town and its limestone quarry.
Australopithecus: Australopithecus is an extinct genus of African hominins that lived before and alongside early members of Homo. The Taung Child belongs to this broader genus of early human relatives.
Human evolution: Human evolution is the evolutionary history of humans and their extinct relatives. The Taung Child became evidence in debates about the sequence and geography of that history.
Mrs. Ples: Mrs. Ples is the nickname for a nearly complete Australopithecus africanus skull discovered at Sterkfontein in 1947. This adult skull offers a same-species contrast with the juvenile Taung fossil.
Robert Broom: Robert Broom was a Scottish-born South African paleontologist who uncovered important australopith fossils. Broom's later discoveries helped support Dart's claim that australopiths belonged in human ancestry.
Endocast: An endocast is a natural or artificial replica of the inside surface of a skull. The fossil preserves an endocranial cast used to study the young individual's braincase.

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