Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania.

dc.contributor.author

McNutt, Ellison J

dc.contributor.author

Hatala, Kevin G

dc.contributor.author

Miller, Catherine

dc.contributor.author

Adams, James

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Casana, Jesse

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Deane, Andrew S

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Dominy, Nathaniel J

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Fabian, Kallisti

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Fannin, Luke D

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Gaughan, Stephen

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Gill, Simone V

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Gurtu, Josephat

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Gustafson, Ellie

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Hill, Austin C

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Johnson, Camille

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Kallindo, Said

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Kilham, Benjamin

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Kilham, Phoebe

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Kim, Elizabeth

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Liutkus-Pierce, Cynthia

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Maley, Blaine

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Prabhat, Anjali

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Reader, John

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Rubin, Shirley

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Thompson, Nathan E

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Thornburg, Rebeca

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Williams-Hatala, Erin Marie

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Zimmer, Brian

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Musiba, Charles M

dc.contributor.author

DeSilva, Jeremy M

dc.date.accessioned

2024-07-15T18:36:21Z

dc.date.available

2024-07-15T18:36:21Z

dc.date.issued

2021-12

dc.description.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.

dc.identifier

10.1038/s41586-021-04187-7

dc.identifier.issn

0028-0836

dc.identifier.issn

1476-4687

dc.identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31268

dc.language

eng

dc.publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

dc.relation.ispartof

Nature

dc.relation.isversionof

10.1038/s41586-021-04187-7

dc.rights.uri

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

dc.subject

Foot

dc.subject

Animals

dc.subject

Ursidae

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Hominidae

dc.subject

Humans

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Pan troglodytes

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Imaging, Three-Dimensional

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Photogrammetry

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Gait

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Lasers

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Phylogeny

dc.subject

Models, Biological

dc.subject

Fossils

dc.subject

Archives

dc.subject

Tanzania

dc.subject

Female

dc.subject

Male

dc.title

Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania.

dc.type

Journal article

duke.contributor.orcid

Musiba, Charles M|0000-0002-4297-5178

pubs.begin-page

468

pubs.end-page

471

pubs.issue

7889

pubs.organisational-group

Duke

pubs.organisational-group

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

pubs.organisational-group

Evolutionary Anthropology

pubs.publication-status

Published

pubs.volume

600

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