THE LAETOLI FOOTPRINTS

"The Laetoli footprints were discovered in 1976, not far from the village of Laetoli in a remote part of Tanzania. We tend to think that major scientific discoveries are made in laboratories by dull, plodding scientists with narrowly-focused minds and eyes, but the Laetoli discovery happened far differently. Two paleoanthropologists, in a group led by the famous anthropologist Mary Leakey, were horsing around, throwing elephant dung at each other while walking a familiar path back from the dig one day. After Andrew Hill dodged one well-aimed faecal projectile, he found himself face-down on the ground and staring at footprints fossilised in a layer of hardened volcanic mud. No one had noticed them before. Later excavation revealed an astonishing find that came to be known as the Laetoli footprints.

What makes these prints an almost unbelievable discovery are that not only are they clearly made by fully bipedal1 creatures, but are also almost indistinguishable from modern human footprints, despite being formed millions of years earlier than the earliest known fossilised human footprints.

The individual footprints are sufficiently well-formed and well-preserved to provide information on the soft tissues (skin and muscle) of their creators, yet even more interesting is the information determined about the skeletons of these upright-walking creatures. The toe pattern is much the same as the modern human foot - the toes are relatively short and the big toe is in line with the other toes. "

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A944336

 

Dr Richard Knight
Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
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