Ancient walking
gets weirder
hominid fossils suggest a
diversity in gait and stance
By Bruce Bower
The simple act of walking continues
to take strange detours among ancient
human ancestors.
To wit, 1.5-million-year-old fossil
footprints excavated in Africa, initially
thought to reflect a thoroughly modern
walking style, were instead made by individuals that walked differently than people today do, researchers reported April
13. Another team presenting April 12
revealed the surprisingly apelike qualities of foot fossils from a 2-million-year-
old species that some researchers regard
as the root of the Homo genus.
These reports come on the heels of
evidence that a previously unknown
member of the human evolutionary
family who lived 3. 4 million years ago
possessed a gorilla-like grasping big toe
and an ungainly stride (SN: 5/5/12, p. 18).
Depth measurements of the African
footprints, discovered at Kenya’s Ileret
site, differ at 10 landmarks from the
footprints of people who live in that area
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A new analysis of 1.5-million-year-old
footprints suggests they were made by
a possible human ancestor with a gait
different from that of modern humans.
today, said Kevin Hatala of George Washington University in Washington, D. C.
“We can infer that the ancient Ileret
individuals had a normal, functional
gait, but they may have walked differently than we do,” Hatala said. For now,
it’s uncertain just how these hominids
walked and whether they belonged to
Homo erectus, a possibly direct human
ancestor, or to the side-branch species
Paranthropus boisei.
Hatala and colleagues compared five
preserved Ileret footprints with those
of 38 Daasanach herders in Kenya, most
of whom had never worn shoes. Par-
ticipants walked across a pressure pad
before walking across moistened Ileret
soil similar to that under which the
ancient footprints were made. Pressure
measurements at 10 spots across the
bottom of the foot closely corresponded
to depth measurements at the same
spots on volunteers’ footprints.
Stone Age Southeast Asians
researchers have discovered the
oldest known human remains in
southeast asia, a partial human skull
dating to at least 40,000 years ago.
excavations at tam Pa Ling cave in
northern Laos produced a dozen
pieces from a stone age person’s
skull, including a skullcap and a lower
jaw, anthropologist Laura shackelford
of the university of illinois at urbana-
Champaign reported april 14. small
front teeth, a rounded braincase and
other traits identify the reassembled
fossil as a modern Homo sapiens,
shackelford said. the find supports
proposals that at least some human
migrations out of africa around
100,000 years ago followed a south-
ern route that led to southeast asia.
— Bruce Bower
Neandertal ancestors speak up
a proposed ancestor of neandertals
and Homo sapiens that lived around
500,000 years ago in a mountainous
part of what’s now spain may have
had the gift of gab. a new analysis
of a Homo heidelbergensis individual’s
skull and upper spine bones, as well
as a horseshoe-shaped neck bone
called the hyoid, suggests that this
long-extinct species could have pro-
duced speech sounds, paleontologist
ignacio Martínez of the university of
alcalá, spain, reported on april 12.
humanlike inner ear bones made it
possible for H. heidelbergensis to hear
conversational speech, Martínez said.
“we don’t know if H. heidelbergensis
spoke, but it possessed anatomical
characteristics for efficient production
and perception of speech,” he con-
cluded. — Bruce Bower
