Why Is The Taang Child Important

Brooke Slizeski
Antthro 1020-90
Final Exam Essay

Tale of the Taung Child

The Taung Child not only has scientific importance, it has historical importance in the fossil record as well. It was the first and best example of the early hominin brain evolution. While the skull was found in 1924 it also plays a historical role as it was among one of the first human remains found in Africa and was able to draw attention to Africa as a major source of human evolution. The Taung child represents researchers first glimpse of early human upright bipedalism and the first human ancestor (Larsen, 290). It also has brought about theories that it exhibits key cranial adaptations found in modern human infants and toddlers. The fraud of Piltdown allowed the finding of the Taung Child by Raymond Dart to be one of the 20 scientific breakthroughs in the 20th Century that shaped the life of humankind (Larsen, 291). I think that it is interesting, especially with all of the controversy going around that researchers now are saying that the Taung Child is not as close to a human infant or toddler as they originally thought. While it has been believed that the
No doubt there are creationists all over the country and the