Taung Child (Australopithecus afarensis) skull discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart at the Taung site in South Africa. This fossil specimen dated about 2.5 million years ago. The Taung Child skull was that of a three year old bipedal ape, the first member of the genus Australopithecus. The skull is about 2.3 million years old. Australopithecus africanus was an extinct hominid species which may be an ancestor of modern humans.