1925 photograph of the Taung Child skull and endocast.

The Taung Child (also known as the Taung Baby) estimated to be 2.5 million years old, is the name given to a Australopithecus africanus skull fossil that was discovered in a limestone quarry near Taung, South Africa in 1924. The skull, along with a crate of other fossils, made its way to Raymond Arthur Dart.  Among the fossils in the crate, Dart found an endocast that matched up with the Taung skull. and published the findings, described as a new species of Australopithecus, in the science journal Nature. It was subsequently dismissed at the time by the science community as just a young gorilla and not a "missing link" in the human evolution trail because the current belief in the "Piltdown Man".
  It would take a couple of decades before the Taung Child was fully accepted and that Africa was considered a major location of the "dawn of man";  an early evolutionary source for humankind.  
  The endocast of the 3 year old Taung Child shows that the brain had an unfused metopic suture, which occurs in human babies but fuses in post-natal great apes. It is suggested that this has ocured in humans because of a reorginization of the birth canal due to bipedalism. Also, the foramen magnum (the hole in witch the spinal cord enters the skull) is positioned toward the front of the skull, which is associated with walking upright. 

The Smithsonian human origins website states:

"The Taung Child is thought have been attacked and killed by an eagle. Scientists suspect an eagle killed the Taung Child because puncture marks were found at the bottom of the 3-year-old’s eye sockets (see close-up photo below). These marks resemble those made by a modern eagle’s sharp talons and beak when they attack monkeys in Africa today. Other evidence for the eagle kill hypothesis includes the presence of eggshells at the site and an unusual mixture of animals bones found alongside the Taung Child’s skull. Most of the bones found are from small animals (including hyrax, rodents, tortoises, lizards, crabs, small antelopes, and small baboons), which is uncommon compared with animal bones at other early human sites. Many of these small animal bones also have damage resembling that made by modern birds of prey."