How apes and humans evolved side by side. The trajectory of human evolution has many markers, including footprints left in moist, volcanic ash 3.66 million years ago by three individuals in Laetoli, Tanzania.
Anthropologist Mary Leakey's team found them in 1978. She later called upon physical anthropologist Russell Tuttle to study them. The footprints are the oldest evidence that early hominids came down from trees and began walking upright. Fossil discovery could be our oldest human ancestor. Researchers have confirmed the age of possibly our oldest direct human ancestor at 1.98 million years old.
The discovery was made after researchers conducted further dating of the early human fossils, Australopithecus sediba, found in South Africa last year. A series of studies carried out on newly exposed cave sediments at the Malapa Cave site in South Africa, where the fossils were found, has assisted researchers to determine their more precise age at 1.98 million years old, making the Malapa site one of the best dated early human sites in the world. A series of papers published in a special issue of the journal Science provide a new, more precise age for the fossils, as well as more detailed studies of the hands, feet, pelvis and brain.
Walk this way: New research suggests human ancestors may have used different forms of bipedalism during the plio-pleistocene. According to a new study, our Australopithecus ancestors may have used different approaches to getting around on two feet.
Lucy and Selam's species climbed trees: Australopithecus afarensis shoulder blades show partially arboreal lifestyle. Australopithecus afarensis (the species of the well-known "Lucy" skeleton) was an upright walking species, but the question of whether it also spent much of its time in trees has been the subject of much debate, partly because a complete set of A. afarensis shoulder blades has never before been available for study.
For the first time, Midwestern University Professor David Green and Curator of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences, Zeresenay Alemseged, have thoroughly examined the two complete shoulder blades of the fossil "Selam," an exceptionally well-preserved skeleton of an A. afarensis child from Dikika, Ethiopia, discovered in 2000 by Dr. Alemseged. Further preparation and extensive analyses of these rare bones showed them to be quite apelike, suggesting that this species was adapted to climbing trees in addition to walking bipedally when on the ground.
New view of human evolution? 3.2 million-year-old fossil foot bone supports humanlike bipedalism in Lucy's species. A fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, shows that by 3.2 million years ago human ancestors walked bipedally with a modern human-like foot, a report that appears Feb. 11 in the journal Science, concludes.
The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis, according to the report authors, Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, together with William Kimbel and Donald Johanson, of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins. The research helps resolve a long-standing debate between paleoanthropologists who think A. afarensis walked essentially as modern humans do and those who think this species practiced a form of locomotion intermediate between the quadrupedal tree-climbing of chimpanzees and human terrestrial bipedalism. 'Lucy' lived among close cousins: Discovery of foot fossil confirms two human ancestor species co-existed. Prehistoric Ape Oreopithecus Did Not Walk on Two Legs Like Human. A new study published online in the Journal of Human Evolution refutes a long body of evidence, suggesting that a 9-million-year-old ape called Oreopithecus bambolii had the capabilities for bipedal walking.
Oreopithecus bambolii (© Museo di Storia Naturale della Maremma) “Our findings offer new insight into the Oreopithecus locomotor debate,” said lead author Dr Gabrielle Russo of the University of Texas at Austin. “While it’s certainly possible that Oreopithecus bambolii walked on two legs to some extent, as apes are known to employ short bouts of this activity, an increasing amount of anatomical evidence clearly demonstrates that it didn’t do so habitually.” Dr Russo and her colleague Dr Liza Shapiro, also from the University of Texas at Austin analyzed Oreopithecus fossils to see whether the ape possessed lower spine anatomy consistent with bipedal walking. Bibliographic information: Gabrielle A. Ardipithecus: Discovering Ardi: How Ardi Walked : Video.
New Ancestor Grasped At Walking. Humans Walked On Modern Feet 1.5 Million Years Ago, Fossil Footprints Show. Ancient footprints found at Rutgers' Koobi Fora Field School show that some of the earliest humans walked like us and did so on anatomically modern feet 1.5 million years ago.
The footprints were discovered in two 1.5 million-year-old sedimentary layers near Ileret in northern Kenya. These rarest of impressions yielded information about soft tissue form and structure not normally accessible in fossilized bones. The Ileret footprints constitute the oldest evidence of an essentially modern human-like foot anatomy. Foot bones are rarely preserved because they are small, encased in flesh, and easily consumed by carnivores. Consequently, our knowledge of foot anatomy and function in early hominins is poor. To ensure that comparisons made with modern human and other fossil hominid footprints were objective, the Ileret footprints were scanned and digitized by the lead author, Professor Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom.