The Taung Child is the fossilised skull of a young Australopithecus africanus. When this 3 year child's skull was found in 1924, it was one of the first early human fossils to be found in South Africa. It was discovered by Raymond Dart through a local quarrymen.
The Taung Child’s first molars had only just begun to rupture through the gum suggesting that the fossilized jaw belongs to a child. Upon closer inspection of the hominid’s dental development, crown formation, and root length suggest the child’s age was 3.3 years at death.
The Taung Child’s fossilized anatomy represented the first time researchers saw evidence of early human upright, two-legged (bipedal) walking. The evidence was the position of the Taung Child’s foramen magnum (the hole through which the spinal cord connects with the brain). This spinal cord hole is positioned at the front of the Taung Child’s skull, a characteristic that suggests bipedal mobility.
The skull is a bony structure that forms the head of the skeleton in most vertebrates. It supports the structures of the face and provides a protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of two parts, namely the cranium and the mandible. The skull contains the brain, and multiple sensory structures such as the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. In the human these sensory structures are part of the
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In this catalog’s portrayal of sugar skulls, papier-mache skeletons, decorated tombs and home altars, storefronts painted with animate skeletons. One of the chapters in the catalog, "The Pre-Hispanic Background," is depicted with an array of pre-Columbian stone sculptures of deities and humans with skull-like faces; with pages from numerous codices (Borgia, Laud, Borbonicus) depicting skull-like and skeletal-like imagery of supernatural beings; and with the skull rack, at the Mayan site of Chichen Itza, alongside other death-related representations from preHispanic