The 2.8-million-year-old hominid skull found in South Africa in 1924 is the Taung Child.
The fossil was discovered near Taung in South Africa’s North West Province at the Buxton Limeworks. Anatomist Raymond Dart examined it and described it in 1925 as Australopithecus africanus, arguing that it represented an early human relative rather than an ape. The specimen is the skull of a young individual, estimated to have been about three years old at death.
The Taung Child was historically important because it provided early evidence that human evolution had deep African roots. At the time, many researchers expected the earliest human ancestors to be found in Asia, so Dart’s interpretation initially faced strong opposition. The fossil preserves both the face and an internal cast of the braincase, offering clues about its anatomy and development.
A common mix-up is Lucy, which is a much younger Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Turkana Boy is also African, but it is a Homo erectus specimen from Kenya.