The fossilized footprints are thought to be 800,000 years old. Photo: Sapienza University
Posted on 06/18/2016 12:42:31 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A team of Italian researchers have possibly uncovered the oldest ever fossilized footprint left behind by modern man's ancestor, Homo Erectus.
The prints are thought to date back some 800,000 years and were unearthed in the desert of south eastern Eritrea...
Alfredo Coppa... from Rome's Sapienza university... and his Italian colleagues were working with researchers from Eritrea's National Museum when they unearthed the 26 m2 slab of stone containing the footprints.
Today, the area lies in the middle of an arid desert, but 800,000 years ago the environment was very different.
The fossilized footprints, which are almost indistinguishable to those of modern man, were left in sandy sediments on what archaeologists believe was once the shore of a large lake.
The shapes of the prints suggests they were filled with water after they formed before they eventually dried out and were buried.
"Fossilized footprints are extremely rare," Coppa explained. "We need to carry out more digs in the area, which has so far turned up the fossilized remains of five or six different Homo Erectus specimens."
Around the footprints, which move from north to south, the tracks of a gazelle-like animal – which were perhaps being stalked by the early man - can also be seen.
Homo Erectus lived between 1.9 and 70,000 years ago and spread from eastern Africa to much of the Middle East and Asia. Modern man, Homo Sapiens, evolved from a group of African Homo Erectus around 200,000 years ago.
The footprints may be the oldest Homo Erectus prints ever discovered but they are by no means the oldest hominid prints.
In 1976 a team in Tanzania located the 3.8 million-year-old tracks of man's first upright ancestor, Australopithecus.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.it ...
The fossilized footprints are thought to be 800,000 years old. Photo: Sapienza University
Did they bronze the baby shoes?
I won’t say it, but have heard some jokes about homo erectus.
A Muslim Democrat Homo Erectus entered the bar...
Homo Erectus lived between 1.9 and 70,000 years ago
At a Bath House?
I’m disappointed. I thought they had found the mud just outside the gate of the garden of Eden.
aka "send grant money"
Every single one. And they frightened the heck out of later people when they found them. Who wouldn't be scared of the thought of tiny people wearing metal shoes? But then it was discovered they would melt in fire so they all got melted down and turned into other objects during The Bronze Age. In fact, that is why it was called The Bronze Age.
Home erectus - nope. Not gonna.
That Skeleton looks Female to me, maybe that explains the Pink? :)
800,000 years?! I didn’t realize libs had been around that long.
I’ve heard of Red Skelton, but not pink skeleton.
A homosexual with an erection?
Keep him at least 1,000 miles from me!
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