What is the Taung Child?
Q: What is the Taung Child?
A: The Taung Child is a fossil of a skull that also has an imprint of the brain. It belongs to an Australopithecus africanus.
Q: Who discovered the Taung Child?
A: The Taung Child was discovered by a quarryman working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa.
Q: When was the Taung Child discovered?
A: The Taung Child was discovered in 1924.
Q: Who recognized the importance of the Taung Child?
A: Raymond Dart, an anatomist at the University of Witwatersrand, recognized the importance of the Taung Child when he looked at the fossil.
Q: What did Dart describe the Taung Child as?
A: Dart described the Taung Child as a new species when he published his account in the journal Nature in 1925.
Q: What did British anthropologists believe at the time of the Taung Child's discovery?
A: British anthropologists at the time believed in the Piltdown Man, a hoax that had a large brain and ape-like teeth, the exact opposite of the Taung Child.
Q: Was the Taung Child's importance immediately appreciated?
A: No, the Taung Child's importance was not immediately appreciated by the scientific community, including British anthropologists who believed in the Piltdown Man. It took decades for Dart's finding to be appreciated.
