Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
Newly discovered fossil footprints in Kenya’s Turkana Basin shows at least 2 different early human species walking on the edge of a lake at the same time.
The hominin footprints were made 1.5 million years ago. The age and shape of the impressions suggests that they were left by Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei. It is the first evidence of two different bipedal patterns being left on the same surface in the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million–11,700 years ago).
Fossil sites around Kenya’s Lake Turkana have provided tantalising glimpses of ancient human evolution.
These include the oldest stone tools, dating to 3.3 million years ago, and the 1.6-million-year-old fossil of a Homo ergaster named “Turkana Boy” – the most complete early hominin skeleton.
The Turkana region footprints are described in a paper published in the journal Science.
Their discovery supports the theory that, at this time in human evolution, several species of early human lived in the same part of Africa where our lineage first emerged.
“For much of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, multiple hominin species coexisted in the same regions of eastern and southern Africa,” the authors write. “Due to the limitations of the skeletal fossil record, questions regarding their interspecific interactions remain unanswered.”
Finding H. erectus and P. boisei in the same location suggests “lake margin habitats were important to both species” and “varying levels of coexistence, competition, and niche partitioning in human evolution”, they add.
The surface has about a dozen tracks associated with a single P. boisei individual and several footprints from different H. erectus. There are also dozens of footprints of birds and other mammals on the surface.
