Italian and Eritrean researchers on Wednesday found the first traces of Homo erectus, a key predecessor of modern man.
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The fossilized footprints are thought to be 800,000 years old
[Credit: Sapienza University] |
The footprints, left 800,000 years ago in the sand of a lake that is now part of an Eritrean desert, were found by palaeontologists from Rome's La Sapienza University and the National Museum of Eritrea, at the Aalad-Amo site in the east of the country.
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Coppa and his Italian colleagues were working with researchers from
Eritrea's National Museum when they
unearthed the 26 m2 slab of stone
containing the footprints [Credit: Sapienza University] |
Dig coordinator Alfredo Coppa said the footprints would likely say a lot about a key species in the history of human evolution.
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The fossilized footprints, which are almost indistinguishable to those
of modern man, were left
in sandy sedimentson what archaeologists
believe was once the shore of a large lake
[Credit: Sapienza University] |
The footprints are very similar to those of modern man and could provide important information about our ancestors' foot anatomy and locomotion: they show details of the toes and the sole of the foot that made them efficient at walking and running.
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Around the footprints, which move from north to south, the tracks of a
gazelle-like animal – which
were perhaps being stalked by the early man -
can also be seen
[Credit: Sapienza University] |
The footprints are aligned in a north-south direction the same as hoof prints left by extinct antelopes and are preserved in a sediment of hardened sand, probably exposed to flooding. This suggests that the area was a lake surrounded by savannah.
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3D reconstruction of one of the footprints
[Credit: Sapienza University] |
The discovery is the first time that footprints from the mid-Pleistocene era have been found, a very important period of transition in human evolution, in which human species with larger brains and more modern bodies than homo erectus developed.
Source: ANSA [June 15, 2016]
TANN
Fantastic discovery, but unfortunately the interpretations (as so often in paleo-anthropology) are unscientific: "The footprints are very similar to those of modern man ... they show details of the toes & the sole of the foot that made them efficient at walking & running." This is anthropocentric thinking: erectus' footprints resemble ours, we can walk & run bipedally (not very efficiently BTW: only about half as fast as horses, lions, dogs or ostriches), therefore H.erectus walked & ran like we do, they conclude. This is wishful thinking. African apes before birth also have humanlike feet, e.g. "The embryo of a chimpanzee at one stage has a foot resembling that of man ... Only as it approaches its birth does its foot acquire the appearance of a hand ..." (C.Coon). IOW, a humanlike foot does not discern Homo from Pan. It might also suggest that chimps & bonobos had more bipedal ancestors. Lowland gorillas & bonobos are bipedal when they wade in forest swamps, e.g. for floating vegetation such as waterlilies or papyrus sedges, google e.g. bonobo wading.
ReplyDeleteCursorial animals have very long & strong middle pedal rays (e.g. ostrich), whereas wading & swimming animals have flatter feet with long & strong outer digital rays, like ours. IOW, our feet were probably originally adapted to wading/swimming, and are only secondarily adapted to more walking/running. The Eritrean footprints are found at a lake, exactly where we predicted them to be, google e.g. econiche Homo.
Great discovery, thanks a lot!