![]() ![]() ![]() The skull was nicknamed ‘Mrs Ples’ because it was originally considered to be an adult female from the genus Plesianthropus. ‘Mrs Ples’ or Sts 5: this 2.5 million-year-old skull discovered in 1947 by Robert Broom and John Robinson in Sterkfontein, South Africa.The robust features of this skull indicate it was an adult male. Sts 71: a 2.5 million-year-old partial skull discovered in1947 by Robert Broom and John Robinson in Sterkfontein, South Africa.We know this individual was a young child because its first molar teeth were in the process of erupting from the jaw. It was the first fossil of a human ancestor ever found in Africa and was also the first to be classified in the genus Australopithecus. This 2.3 million-year-old skull of a young child is the ‘type specimen’ or official representative of this species. Taung Child: a partial skull and brain endocast discovered in 1924 in Taung, South Africa.MLD 2: a lower jaw from an adolescent discovered in Makapansgat, South Africa.This is a human-like rather than an ape-like feature as modern humans sometimes have six but usually have five lumbar vertebrae whereas modern African apes have five or less. The spine has six lumbar vertebrae in the lower back. The shape of this pelvis proved Australopithecus africanus was able to walk upright on two legs. Sts 14: a partial skeleton discovered in1947 by Robert Broom and John Robinson in Sterkfontein, South Africa.Since then, many hundreds of Australopithecus africanus fossils have been found in South Africa. Acceptance only arose in the late 1940s after Robert Broom’s discoveries of more fossils including those of adults. Dart believed it to be an early ancestor of humans and in 1925 he gave his ‘man-ape’ a new species name, Australopithecus africanus.ĭart had difficulty convincing other scientists that this was a human ancestor, partly because at the time, many believed human ancestors had large brains and ape-like jaws whereas the Taung Child had the opposite set of features. The now-famous Taung Child skull had a mixture of human-like and ape-like features. In 1924, a fossil was rescued from a limestone quarry at Taung in South Africa and sent to Australian, Raymond Dart who was a Professor of Anatomy in nearby Johannesburg. This species lived between 3.2 and 2 million years ago. ![]()
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