Illustration of an Australopithecus sp. hominin walking. The genus Australopithecus includes a variety of hominin species that lived between 4.18 million and about 2 million years ago. Australopiths were terrestrial, bipedal, ape-like creatures. They had large, robust chewing teeth, which were adapted for processing a diverse diet that likely included tough plant materials and seeds. However, their brains were only slightly larger than those of modern great apes. Australopiths are the closest known relatives of our genus, Homo, and it is believed that we evolved from a species within this genus. The first fossil specimen of Australopithecus was discovered in 1924 in a lime quarry in Taung, South Africa. This discovery, known as the Taung Child, provided groundbreaking evidence of bipedalism in early hominins and sparked significant scientific interest in the study of human ancestry.