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Taung
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 people. ''Tau'' is the Tswana word for lion. 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 in 1925 as the type specimen of ''Australopithecus africanus'' 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 d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 species in the journal ''Nature'' in 1925. The Taung skull is in repository at the University of Witwatersrand. Dean Falk, a specialist in brain evolution, has called it "the most important anthropological fossil of the twentieth century." Description The Taung Child was originally thought to have been about six years old at death because of the presence of deciduous teeth, but is now believed to have been about three or four, based on studies of rates of enamel deposition on the teeth. There was some debate over the age of the child, initially because it was unclear if they grew at the speed of a human, or of an ape. Compared to an ape, they would have been aged about 4 years, and compared to a human, they would have been aged around 5–7 y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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, Sterkfontein, Makapansgat, and Gladysvale. The first specimen, the Taung child, was described by anatomist Raymond Dart in 1924, and was the first early hominin found. However, its closer relations to humans than to other apes would not become widely accepted until the middle of the century because most had believed humans evolved outside of Africa. It is unclear how ''A. africanus'' relates to other hominins, being variously placed as ancestral to ''Homo'' and ''Paranthropus'', to just ''Paranthropus'', or to just '' P. robustus''. The specimen " Little Foot" is the most completely preserved early hominin, with 90% of the skeleton intact, and the oldest South African australopith. However, it is controversially suggested that it and similar speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greater Taung Local Municipality
Greater Taung Municipality () is a local municipality within the Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality, in the North West province of South Africa. The seat of the municipality is Taung. Main places The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places: Politics The municipal council consists of forty-eight members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Twenty-four councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in twenty-four wards, while the remaining twenty-four are chosen from party lists so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received. In the election of 1 November 2021 the African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ... (ANC) won a majorit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 found of '' Australopithecus africanus'', an extinct hominin closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the Northwest province. Early life Raymond Dart was born in Toowong, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, the fifth of nine children and son of a farmer and tradesman. His birth occurred during the 1893 flood, which filled his parents' home and shop in Toowong. The family moved alternately between their country property near Laidley and their shop in Toowong. The young Dart attended Toowong State School, Blenheim State School and earned a scholarship to Ipswich Grammar School from 1906 to 1909. Dart considered becoming a medical missionary to China and wished to study medicine at the University of Sydney, but his father argued that he should accept the schola ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality
The Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality (), formerly the Bophirima District Municipality, is one of the 4 districts of the North West province of South Africa. The seat of the municipality is Vryburg. As of 2011, the majority of its 439,637 residents speak Setswana. The district code is DC39. It is South Africa's largest beef producing district, with Hereford cattle the most popular. It is sometimes called "the Texas of South Africa". Maize and peanuts are important crops produced in the district. The district was renamed after the former Mayor of Vryburg, Ruth Mompati. Geography Neighbours Mompati District is surrounded (clockwise) by: * the republic of Botswana to the north * Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality to the north-east * Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality to the south-east * Lejweleputswa District Municipality ( Free State province) to the south-east * Frances Baard District Municipality (Northern Cape province) to the south * Kgalagadi Dist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini; and it encloses Lesotho. Covering an area of , the country has Demographics of South Africa, a population of over 64 million people. Pretoria is the administrative capital, while Cape Town, as the seat of Parliament of South Africa, Parliament, is the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein is regarded as the judicial capital. The largest, most populous city is Johannesburg, followed by Cape Town and Durban. Cradle of Humankind, Archaeological findings suggest that various hominid species existed in South Africa about 2.5 million years ago, and modern humans inhabited the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North West (South African Province)
North West ( ; ) is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Mahikeng. The province is located to the west of the major population centre and province of Gauteng and south of Botswana. History North West was incorporated after the end of apartheid in 1994, and includes parts of the former Transvaal Province and Cape Province, as well as most of the former bantustan of Bophuthatswana. It was the scene of political violence in Khutsong, Merafong City Local Municipality in 2006 and 2007, after cross-province municipalities were abolished and Merafong Municipality was transferred entirely to North West. Merafong has since been transferred to Gauteng province in 2009. This province is the birthplace of prominent political figures: Lucas Mangope, Moses Kotane, Ahmed Kathrada, Abram Onkgopotse Tiro, Ruth Mompati, J. B. Marks, Aziz Pahad, and Essop Pahad, among others. Law and government The Provincial Government consists of a premier, an executive council of ten min ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North West Province (South Africa)
North West ( ; ) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa. Its capital is Mahikeng. The province is located to the west of the major population centre and Provinces of South Africa, province of Gauteng and south of Botswana. History North West was incorporated after the end of apartheid in 1994, and includes parts of the former Transvaal Province and Cape Province, as well as most of the former bantustan of Bophuthatswana. It was the scene of political violence in Khutsong, Merafong City Local Municipality in 2006 and 2007, after cross-province municipalities were abolished and Merafong Municipality was transferred entirely to North West. Merafong has since been transferred to Gauteng province in 2009. This province is the birthplace of prominent political figures: Lucas Mangope, Moses Kotane, Ahmed Kathrada, Abram Onkgopotse Tiro, Ruth Mompati, J. B. Marks, Aziz Pahad, and Essop Pahad, among others. Law and government The North West Provincial Government, Pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil Hominid Sites Of South Africa
The Cradle of Humankind is a paleoanthropological site that is located about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Gauteng province. Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, the site is home to the largest known concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. The site currently occupies and contains a complex system of limestone caves. The registered name of the site in the list of World Heritage Sites is Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa. According to the ''South African Journal of Science'', Bolt's Farm is the place where the earliest primates were discovered. Bolt's Farm was heavily mined for speleothem (calcium carbonate from stalagmites, stalactites, and flowstones) in the terminal nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Sterkfontein Caves were the site of the discovery of a 2.3-million-year-old fossil ''Australopithecus africanus'' (nicknamed " Mrs. Ples"), found in 1947 by Robert Broom and John T. Robinson. The find he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taphonomy
Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the paleontological record. The term ''taphonomy'' (from Greek language, Greek , 'burial' and , 'law') was introduced to paleontology in 1940 by Soviet scientist Ivan Yefremov, Ivan Efremov to describe the study of the transition of remains, parts, or products of organisms from the biosphere to the lithosphere. The term taphomorph is used to describe fossil structures that represent poorly-preserved, deteriorated remains of a mixture of Taxon, taxonomic groups, rather than of a single one. Description Taphonomic phenomena are grouped into two phases: biostratinomy, events that occur between death of the organism and the burial; and diagenesis, events that occur after the burial. Since Efremov's definition, taphonomy has expanded to include the fossilization of organic and inorganic materials through both cultural and environmental influences. Taphonomy is now most widely defined as the study of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotho Language
Sotho (), also known as ''Sesotho'' (), Southern Sotho, or ''Sesotho sa Borwa'' is a Southern Bantu languages, Southern Bantu language spoken in Lesotho as its national language and South Africa where it is an official language. Like all Bantu languages, Sesotho is an agglutinative language that uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build Sesotho grammar#The Sesotho word, complete words. Classification Sotho is a Southern Bantu languages, Southern Bantu language belonging to the Niger–Congo languages, Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho-Tswana languages, Sotho-Tswana branch of Guthrie classification of Bantu languages#Zone S, Zone S (S.30). "Sotho" is also the name given to the entire Sotho-Tswana group, in which case Sesotho proper is called "Southern Sotho". Within the Sotho-Tswana group Southern Sotho is also related to Lozi language, Lozi (''Silozi'') with which it forms the Sesotho-Lozi group within Sotho-Tswana. The Northern Sot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tswana Language
Tswana, also known by its Endonym and exonym, native name Setswana, is a Bantu language indigenous to Southern Africa and spoken by about 8.2 million people. It is closely related to the Northern Sotho language, Northern Sotho and Sotho language, Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi language and the Lozi language. Setswana is an official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is a lingua franca in Botswana and parts of South Africa, particularly North West Province. Tswana speaking ethnic groups are found in more than two provinces of South Africa, primarily in the North West (South African province), North West, where about four million people speak the language. An urbanised variety is known as Pretoria Sotho, and is the principal unique language of the city of Pretoria. The three South African provinces with the most speakers are Gauteng (circa 11%), Northern Cape, and North West (over 70%). Until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
