Taung is a small

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

situated in the North West Province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

. 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 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 dimorphic; adu ...

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 The Taung Child (or Taung Baby) is the fossilised skull of a young '' Australopithecus africanus''. It was discovered in 1924 by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa. Raymond Dart described it as a new specie ...

) was discovered by a

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envir ...

-worker in the nearby Buxton-

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...

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 hom ...

in 1925 as the

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes th ...

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, Sterkfontei ...

'' after he received a shipment of mostly fossil

baboon Baboons are primates comprising the genus ''Papio'', one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma ...

s, 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 Phillip Vallentine Tobias (14 October 1925 – 7 June 2012) was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He was best known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil ...

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 Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other Astronomical object, astronomical objects, the features or rock (geology), rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology ...

and taphonomy significantly. Unlike the dolomitic caves near

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...

, South Africa and the site of Makapansgat, the Taung fossil sites are found in caves formed in a gigantic

tufa Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of water in unheated rivers or lakes. Geothermally heated hot springs sometimes produce similar (but less porous) carbonate deposits, which are known as travertin ...

flow coming off the dolomitic bedrock of the Kalahari escarpment. The

is among the most important early human fossils ever discovered. It was the first hominid to be discovered in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, a species later named ''

'', supporting

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

'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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

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 A brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as Visual perception, vision. I ...

is preserved by the filling of the skull with limestone

breccia Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language, in which it means "rubble". A breccia may have a variety of ...

. The skull is housed at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( or ). The university ...

. The

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 A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other s ...

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, ...

. 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 leadersh ...

, and identification of specific marks on the

skull have demonstrated that the

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