Why was Dart’s insistence that the Taung child was a hominin and not an ape originally dismissed?
The associated jawbone turned out to be a hoaxed fossil made with a modern ape jaw.
It did not support contemporary ideas about humans originating in Europe.
The child-like skeleton seemed too small to be capable of supporting a bipedal style of locomotion.
Evolutionary theories at the time did not account for bipedalism evolving before increased cranial capacity
