Nature: An unknown human species was discovered in the fossil footprints of Africa 3.6 million years ago

Source: China News Network

BEIJING, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- In a recent paleontological research paper published in nature, a well-known international academic journal, researchers reanalyzed the fossil footprints of Laetoli in northern Tanzania, Africa, and found that more than one human species had walked on bipedality about 3.6 million years ago.

Letoli's fossil footprints have a set of footprints previously thought to belong to early modern relatives, and the latest research suggests that another set of traces belongs to an unidentified human species. The new findings provide new insights into the origins of upright walking.

The paper claims that the discovery of 5 consecutive footprints by Torrey in the 1970s provides the earliest conclusive evidence for the upright walking of the Terrans, and these footprints are thought to have been left by Australopithecus Alpha (the same species as the skeleton of the famous human grandmother "Lucy"). Other footprints discovered during the same period and subsequently covered up have sparked controversy: some believe they were left behind by bears walking on their hind legs; others believe they came from different human races.

In 2019, the corresponding author, Ellison McNutt of the Ohio University School of Orthopaedics, formed a team of colleagues and collaborators to rediscover these anomalously shaped footprints, comparing them with the footprints of bears, chimpanzees and humans, and found that they were closer to the human race than to the traces left by bears. The team's further video analysis of the behavior of wild American black bears showed that they barely used to walk on their hind feet.

The authors also note that although Lytoli has found thousands of animal fossils, there are no bears among them. They concluded that the footprints came from an as-yet-undetermined Terran species and boasted a bizarre gait of crossed steps—each step beyond the midline of the body, touching the ground in front of the other foot.

An international peer expert published a "News and Opinions" article in Nature at the same time that these findings are part of a growing body of evidence that the terran diversity of the period was not yet fully understood. (End)