Footprints laid down near Lake Turkana in Kenya 1.5 million years ago were made by human ancestors with essentially modern foot anatomy and gait, a new study has found.
More than a million years ago an ancient human ancestor walked across a sandy plain in eastern Africa, leaving footprints that scientists are now hailing as the earliest evidence of modern upright walking.
About 1.5 million years ago, human ancestors walked upright with a spring in their steps just as modern humans do today, suggests an analysis of ancient footprints found in northern Kenya.
The prints were probably left by Homo ergaster, an earlier, larger version of the widespread Homo erectus, says David Braun, a lecturer in archeology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and co-author of the study set to be published tomorrow in Science. This discovery "lets us know that they were probably just as efficient at walking upright as we are," he says.
clipped from: www.newscientist.com