Taung

▪ anthropological and archaeological site, South Africa

 a former mine in South Africa in which the first fossil of Australopithecus africanus (Australopithecus) was discovered. Exhumed by miners in 1924, the fossil was recognized as a primitive hominin (member of the human lineage) by paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart (Dart, Raymond A.).

      The Taung specimen is a natural cast of the inside of the skull and the face of a three- or four-year-old child. The ape-sized brain was only one-third the size of that of modern humans, but the skull has humanlike teeth. The hole at the base of the skull (foramen magnum) reveals the posture of an upright human, not a knuckle-walking ape. Initially the small brain led most researchers to reject it as a human ancestor, but later discoveries proved that human evolution began with the adoption of two-legged walking (bipedalism) while brains were still essentially apelike. The Taung site was destroyed by miners before paleontologists and geologists could determine its exact age, but animal fossils found with the skull are consistent with an age of about 2.4 million years. Additional specimens of A. africanus have been found at other South African sites, including Sterkfontein and Makapansgat.

Henry McHenry IV

 

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