|
worlds oldest footprint found in kenya
worlds oldest footprint found in kenya
this is sure to bring the debate back up again. what does everyone think?
i think this may be one back for those that think that there is a creator and that we didnt evolve from apes.
interesting nonetheless.
Quote:
World's oldest footprint found in Kenya | World News | News.com.au
World's oldest footprint found in Kenya
From correspondents in Washington
Agence France-Presse
February 27, 2009 03:18pm
ANCIENT fossil footprints dating back 1.5 million years have been discovered in Kenya, the oldest evidence yet that our ancestors walked like present-day humans. The footprints were discovered in two sedimentary layers near Ileret in northern Kenya and revealed an essentially modern human-like foot anatomy.
The impressions came from the Homo ergaster, or early Homo erectus, the first hominid whose longer legs and shorter arms corresponded to the body proportions of the modern Homo sapiens, the study's authors said.
The footprints provided information on the soft tissue form and structure that are not usually available in fossilized bones, explained Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in Britain, the lead author of the study published in the journal Science.
Professor Bennett scanned and digitized the footprint to make sure that comparisons with modern human and other fossil hominid footprints were objective.
The upper sediment layer contained three footprint trails: two trails of two prints each, a trail of seven prints and several isolated prints.
The other sediment layer, five metres deeper, preserved a trail of two prints and a smaller isolated print that the authors said probably was that of a child.
In all specimens, the big toe was parallel to the other toes, unlike apes, whose big toes are separated to help grasping tree branches. The Ileret footprints also show a pronounced arch and short toes that are human-like and are usually associated with the ability to walk on two feet.
Several Homo ergaster and Homo erectus fossils dating from the same era as the Ileret prints have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.
In 1978, British archeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey discovered footprints in Laetoli, Tanzania that dated back 3.6 million years. But those prints were attributed to a less advanced creature, the Australopithecus afarensis, that showed a shallower arch and a more ape-like separated big toe
|
__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere
I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy
|