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]
