Taung is a small town situated in the North West Province of South Africa. The name means ''place of the lion'' and was named after Tau, the King of the Barolong. ''Tau'' is the Tswana word for

lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...

Education

High,Secondary and Middle Schools in Taung include: *PH Moeketsi Agricultural High School *Pinagare High School *Mankuroane Technical and Commercial Secondary School *Thabasikwa High School *Kgosietsile Lethola High School *Pudumong High School *Bogosing High School *Leshobo High School *Reekekathata Secondary School *Batlhaping High School *St Paul's High Schools *Mokgareng High Schools *Sekate Boijane Mahura High School *Maatla High School *Marubising High School *Thate Molatlhwa Secondary School *Gabodiwe High School *Choseng Secondary School *Joseph Saku Secondary School *Thakung High School *Jerry Secondary School *Walter Letsie High School *Kabinelang Secondary School *Mothelesi Secondary School *Reivilo High School *Seoleseng Secondary School *Gabobediwe Secondary School *Thapama Secondary School *Kebinelang Secondary School *Tselayathuto Secondary School *Totonyane Secondary School *Mammutla Secondary School *Motsemme Secondary School *Leshobo High School *Pudumong Secondary School *Thusoetsile Secondary School *Thakung Secondary School *Reemekathatha Secondary School *Seabo Secondary School Primary Schools in Taung include: *Seile Primary School *Seoposengwe Primary School *Mokasa Primary School *Lokgabeng Primary School *Goitseone Mankuroane Primary School

Taung skull fossil site

In 1924, a skull (later named the Taung Child) was discovered by a quarry-worker in the nearby Buxton- limestone quarry. It was described by

Raymond Dart Raymond Arthur Dart (4 February 1893 – 22 November 1988) was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of ''Australopithecus africanus'', an extinct homi ...

in 1925 as the type specimen of ''

Australopithecus africanus ''Australopithecus africanus'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived between about 3.3 and 2.1 million years ago in the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of South Africa. The species has been recovered from Taung, Sterkfonte ...

'' after he received a shipment of mostly fossil baboons, but also containing the skull and face of the child. Surprisingly, it would be many years before Dart would visit Taung to determine the exact location of the find. By that time, lime-mining had destroyed much of the area. Later ''in-situ'' excavations were conducted under the direction of Phillip Tobias and Jeffrey McKee of the University of the Witwatersrand, who worked at the site from approximately 1989 until 1993. Although they failed to find additional hominid specimens, they did recover many important fossil baboons and increased the understanding of the Taung geology and taphonomy significantly. Unlike the dolomitic caves near Johannesburg, South Africa and the site of Makapansgat, the Taung fossil sites are found in caves formed in a gigantic tufa flow coming off the dolomitic bedrock of the Kalahari escarpment. The Taung Child is among the most important early human fossils ever discovered. It was the first hominid to be discovered in Africa, a species later named ''

'', supporting Charles Darwin's concepts that the closest living relatives of humans are the

African apes Homininae (), also called "African hominids" or "African apes", is a subfamily of Hominidae. It includes two tribes, with their extant as well as extinct species: 1) the tribe Hominini (with the genus ''Homo'' including modern humans and numerou ...

. It furthermore demonstrated significant differences between reality and the fake skull of a proposed human ancestor from England known as the

Piltdown Man The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains ...

or ''Eoanthropus''. The little skull is hypothesized to be from an approximately three to three and a half year old child. The cast of the brain is preserved by the filling of the skull with limestone breccia. The skull is housed at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Taung Child was at first proposed to have been killed by other hominids as part of Raymond Dart's Osteo-Dento-Keratic Culture hypothesis. However, later work by C.K. "Bob" Brain demonstrated that the child was probably killed by some sort of mammalian carnivore such as a

leopard The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant species in the genus '' Panthera'', a member of the cat family, Felidae. It occurs in a wide range in sub-Saharan Africa, in some parts of Western and Central Asia, Southern Russia, a ...

. Recently, however, studies of the associated baboons by

Ron Clarke Ronald William Clarke, AO, MBE (21 February 1937 – 17 June 2015) was an Australian athlete, writer, and the Mayor of the Gold Coast from 2004 to 2012. He was one of the best-known middle- and long-distance runners in the 1960s, notable for ...

and

Lee Berger Lee Rogers Berger (born December 22, 1965) is an American-born South African paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He is best known for his discovery of the '' Australopithecus sediba'' type site, Malapa; his leade ...

, and identification of specific marks on the Taung Child skull have demonstrated that the Taung Child may have been killed and eaten by a large bird of prey. Taung child.jpg, The Taung Child skull as seen when it was exhibited at the Maropeng visitor's centre at the Cradle of Humankind in early 2007 Taung1.jpg, The Taung Child skull with arrows pointing to possible Eagle-caused damage

References

Sources

*P.V. Tobias, ''Dart Taung and the Missing Link'' (''Inst. for the Study of Man in Africa'', 1984) *L.R. Berger and B. Hilton-Barber, ''In the Footsteps of Eve'' (National Geographic Press, 2001) *L.R. Berger and B. Hilton-Barber, ''Field Guide to the Cradle of Humankind'' (Struik, 2001)
L.R. Berger Am. J.Phys. Anth. 131:166-168 (2006)
{{Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality Archaeological sites in South Africa Pliocene paleontological sites of Africa Caves of South Africa Limestone caves Landforms of North West (South African province) Populated places in the Greater Taung Local Municipality Paleoanthropological sites Archaeological sites of Southern Africa

Education

Taung skull fossil site

See also

References

Sources