Taung Skull

1924 - the year the first australopithecine came to light in South Africa. Professor Raymond Dart of Witwatersrand University was sorting another crate of limestone rock from a quarry near a place called Taung.

Embedded in one of the rocks were the remains of a cranium. Of what? An ape? A primitive human? The individual was evidentlyimmature.

Dart was certain it was an extinct hominid, although very few of his colleagues in the profession agreed. Dart called his new find various things, but finally settled for Australopithecus africanus, the first of the "gracile" australopithecines, hominids with a slender or graceful physique.

• What do you think are the characteristics of the Taung specimen that justified his proposal?

African Sites

All australopithecine material and the earliest Homo material have been found in Africa. Notice the distribution of sites in relation to the African Rift Valley system.