the taung child is among the most important early human fossils ever discovered. 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". the little skull is hypothesized to be from an approximately three to three and a half year old child. the cast of the brain is preserved by the filling of the skull with limestone breccia. the skull is housed at the university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg, south africa.