Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania.
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2021-12
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Abstract
Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage1-3. Another trackway discovered two years earlier at nearby site A was partially excavated and attributed to a hominin, but curious affinities with bears (ursids) marginalized its importance to the paleoanthropological community, and the location of these footprints fell into obscurity3-5. In 2019, we located, excavated and cleaned the site A trackway, producing a digital archive using 3D photogrammetry and laser scanning. Here we compare the footprints at this site with those of American black bears, chimpanzees and humans, and we show that they resemble those of hominins more than ursids. In fact, the narrow step width corroborates the original interpretation of a small, cross-stepping bipedal hominin. However, the inferred foot proportions, gait parameters and 3D morphologies of footprints at site A are readily distinguished from those at site G, indicating that a minimum of two hominin taxa with different feet and gaits coexisted at Laetoli.
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McNutt, Ellison J, Kevin G Hatala, Catherine Miller, James Adams, Jesse Casana, Andrew S Deane, Nathaniel J Dominy, Kallisti Fabian, et al. (2021). Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania. Nature, 600(7889). pp. 468–471. 10.1038/s41586-021-04187-7 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31268.
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Charles M Musiba
Dr. Charles Musiba is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at Duke University in the department of Evolutionary Anthropology. He is also a research professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and the Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Charles Musiba is a Montgomery and Carnegie African Diaspora fellow with research focus on human origins in eastern Africa. His work covers the following areas: taphonomy and paleoecology of Laetoli, evolution of upright posture and bipedalism, hominin behavior ecology at Olduvai Gorge, conservation of hominin footprints and animal trackways at Laetoli, and the evolution of the genus Homo in Eastern and Southern Africa (Laetoli, Isimila and Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and the Rising Star Cave in South Africa). Charles Musiba is interested in reconstructing past environments (4 million years ago to 250,000 years ago) using multiple proxy data and he is actively involved in conservation efforts and sustainable use of paleoanthropological resources in Tanzania through education and cultural exchange programs. Charles Musiba has extensively worked on the evolution of upright posture and bipedal gait in humans with emphasis on the interpretation of the 3.6 million years old fossil hominin footprints from Laetoli in northern Tanzania.
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