It was described by Raymond Dart in 1925 as the type specimen of Australopithecus africanus after he received a shipment of mostly fossil baboons, but also containing the skull and face of the child.

Later in-situ excavations were conducted under the direction of Phillip Tobias and Jeffrey McKee [3] of the University of the Witwatersrand, who worked at the site from approximately 1989 until 1993.

Although they failed to find additional hominid specimens, they did recover many important fossil baboons and increased the understanding of the Taung geology and taphonomy significantly.

It was the first hominid to be discovered in Africa, a species later named Australopithecus africanus, supporting Charles Darwin's concepts that the closest living relatives of humans are the African apes.

It furthermore demonstrated significant differences between reality and the fake skull of a proposed human ancestor from England known as the Piltdown Man or Eoanthropus.