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Author Topic:   1.5 million year old footprints
RAZD
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Message 1 of 1 (500490)
02-26-2009 6:26 PM


BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Earliest 'human footprints' found
quote:

The earliest footprints showing evidence of modern human foot anatomy and gait have been unearthed in Kenya.

The 1.5-million-year-old footprints display signs of a pronounced arch and short, aligned toes, in contrast to older footprints.
The size and spacing of the Kenyan markings - attributed to Homo erectus - reflect the height, weight, and walking style of modern humans.
What they found was two sets of footprints, one five metres deeper than the other, separated by sand, silt, and volcanic ash.
The team dated the surrounding sediment by comparing it with well-known radioisotope-dated samples from the region, finding that the two layers of prints were made at least 10,000 years apart.
The findings have been published in the journal Science.
Just a moment...
Science 27 February 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5918, pp. 1197 - 1201
DOI: 10.1126/science.1168132
quote:

Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints from Ileret, Kenya

Hominin footprints offer evidence about gait and foot shape, but their scarcity, combined with an inadequate hominin fossil record, hampers research on the evolution of the human gait. Here, we report hominin footprints in two sedimentary layers dated at 1.51 to 1.53 million years ago (Ma) at Ileret, Kenya, providing the oldest evidence of an essentially modern human—like foot anatomy, with a relatively adducted hallux, medial longitudinal arch, and medial weight transfer before push-off. The size of the Ileret footprints is consistent with stature and body mass estimates for Homo ergaster/erectus, and these prints are also morphologically distinct from the 3.75-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania. The Ileret prints show that by 1.5 Ma, hominins had evolved an essentially modern human foot function and style of bipedal locomotion.
Exciting stuff
Enjoy.

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