This tiny fossilized skull is known as the Taung Child. It belonged to a 3-year-old child that lived around 2.8 million years ago! It was discovered in 1924 by workers at a South African rock quarry.
The skull was brought to a scientist named Raymond Dart, who spent over two months scraping away the surrounding limestone with knitting needles. He described the fossil in the journal Nature in February 1925, giving it the species name Australopithecus africanus, which means the "southern ape from Africa."
This amazing fossil also had what's called an endocast of the brain, which you can see in the second and third photos. An endocast is a fossil impression of a hollow object, like a skull. This endocast captured the shape and size of the Taung Child's brain, giving Raymond Dart an important clue that this was a human relative, not just an extinct ape.
#humanevolution #fossil #skull #paleoanthropology #todayilearned #til #fossilfriday ... See MoreSee Less
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Introducing the fall 2023 Research Grant recipients
