{"id":31092,"date":"2016-12-15T01:19:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T01:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/fossil-footprints-tell-story-of-human-origins\/"},"modified":"2016-12-15T01:19:10","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T01:19:10","slug":"fossil-footprints-tell-story-of-human-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/fossil-footprints-tell-story-of-human-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossil footprints tell story of human origins"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Footprints made by early humans millions of years ago have been uncovered in Tanzania close to where similar tracks were found in the 1970s.}<\/p>\n

The impressions were made when some of our distant relatives walked together across wet volcanic ash.<\/p>\n

Their makers, most likely Australopithecus afarensis, appear to have had a wide range of body sizes.<\/p>\n

Scientists say this gives clues to how this ancient species of human lived.
\nAustralopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species.<\/p>\n

The fossil of “Lucy”, a young adult female who lived in Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago, is perhaps the most famous individual.<\/p>\n

The newly discovered footprints may have been made by a male walking with smaller females.<\/p>\n

“This novel evidence, taken as a whole with the previous findings, portrays several early hominins moving as a group through the landscape following a volcanic eruption and subsequent rainfall. But there is more,” said lead researcher Prof Giorgio Manzi, director of the archaeological project in Tanzania.<\/p>\n

“The footprints of one of the new individuals are astonishingly larger than anyone else’s in the group, suggesting that he was a large male member of the species.<\/p>\n

“In fact, the 165cm stature indicated by his footprints makes him the largest Australopithecus specimen identified to date.”<\/p>\n

{{Gorilla-like lifestyle}}<\/p>\n

In 1976, preserved footprints thought to be made by Australopithecus were discovered at a site in Laetoli, Tanzania.<\/p>\n

At 3.66 million years old, they are the oldest documented bipedal footprint trails.
\nNow, the discovery of a second set of footprints has been revealed in the journal, eLife.<\/p>\n

“Now that we’ve found a new set of footprints it opens up a completely different window and there could be a number of new possibilities to study what is a photograph in time of the everyday life of this species,” said Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi of the University of Florence.<\/p>\n

The tracks were found during excavations for a museum only 150m south of the original discovery.<\/p>\n

The researchers, based in Italy and Tanzania, think the two sets could belong together, giving clues to the lifestyle of Australopithecus.<\/p>\n

“A tentative conclusion is that the group consisted of one male, two or three females, and one or two juveniles, which leads us to believe that the male – and therefore other males in the species – had more than one female mate,” said Dr Marco Cherin, director of the school of paleoanthropology at the University of Perugia.<\/p>\n

The finding of a male perhaps walking with several females could mean their social structure was “closer to a gorilla-like model than to chimpanzees or modern humans”.<\/p>\n

In gorillas, one male and a number of females form a mating and child-rearing group.
\nThe study also raises questions about how human feet were made for walking.<\/p>\n

{{Bipedal walking}}<\/p>\n

Australopithecus were capable of walking upright on two legs, but we don’t know how much they resembled modern humans in the way they walked.<\/p>\n

Prof Robin Crompton of the University of Liverpool, who is not connected to the study, said the latest footprints will give more information, once statistical work is done.<\/p>\n

“Some people have argued that they have a slightly different gait, but I don’t think there’s any good evidence for that,” he told BBC News.<\/p>\n

“If humans have been walking the same way as we do now for more or less 3.65 million years, and human ancestors – in another genus – Australopithecus – then that’s really fairly exciting.”<\/p>\n

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