Posted on 07/08/2018 5:20:41 PM PDT by ETL
More than 3 million years ago, our adult human ancestors were walking on two feet and didn't have the option of a fashionable baby sling to carry their kids around in.
Instead, Australopithecus afarensis toddlers had a special grasping toe that helped them hold on to their mothers and escape into the trees, reports a study published July 4 in Science Advances.
The evidence comes from DIK-1-1 — a relatively complete 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of a 2.5- to 3-year-old female Australopithecus afarensisdiscovered in Dikika, Ethiopia.
The skeleton, nicknamed Selam — after the word for peace in Ethiopia's official language of Amharic – includes the oldest and most complete foot bones of this species ever found.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
From Wikipedia...
Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, several hundred pieces of bone fossils representing 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis.
Date discovered: November 24, 1974 Age: 3.2 million years
That is an old toddler!
3-million-year-old toddler? They took a lot longer to grow up than kids do nowadays.
Today they would be arrested for letting the kid climb in trees.
Yes, by the time they reached their college years they were in the neighborhood of 20 million.
Lefty chicks are good at climbing trees...and doing other things to them.
I’m surprised that we ended up without that ability - would seem to be a clear advantage to keeping oneself alive. Even today. My foot doctor says something like 80% of people have bad foot support. Perhaps we weren’t meant to wear shoes?
“i’m THIS many”
I couldn't climb trees anymore after my mid 30s.
It’s a baboon.
Headline reading only... Did it take 3 million years for the toddler to figure out how to climb trees?
Of course it climbed trees - it’s a monkey.
LOL!
Evolution works in mysterious ways.
Our ancestors from 3 million years ago didn’t have slings to carry their babies around in, but, nature/evolution provided the answer until the slings would get invented, and so, back then, nature/evolution gave those babies a grasping toe to allow their mothers to climb trees with no worries about the babies.
Now that slings have been invented, those grasping toes were done away with. Nature is so “logical”.
So I guess these stories like to discount the Bible and the Creator God Himself. So are they suggesting God created this 3 million year old toddler with a hook for a toe and that this was the offspring of one of the descendants of Adam and Eve?
But the bigger question remains....
Did this child have racism in his heart ?
Did he feel superior to actual apes?
His legacy depends on the appropriate answer or there will be no statues for him....
Nor endorsement deals
Yep, by their reasoning I have toddlers at my door nightly, begging for treats. I even had to make a doorbell for them. Some around here call them coons though ...
“The Laetoli footprints were most likely made by Australopithecus afarensis [same as the 3-million year old toddler, and ‘Lucy’], an early human whose fossils were found in the same sediment layer.
The entire footprint trail is almost 27 m (88 ft) long and includes impressions of about 70 early human footprints.
3.6 million years ago in Laetoli, Tanzania, two early humans walked through wet volcanic ash. When the nearby volcano erupted again, subsequent layers of ash covered and preserved the oldest known footprints of early humans.
Team members led by paleontologist Mary Leakey stumbled upon animal tracks cemented in the volcanic ash in 1976, but it wasn’t until 1978 that Paul Abell joined Leakey’s team and found the 88ft (27m) long footprint trail referred to now as “The Laetoli Footprints,” which includes about 70 early human footprints.
The early humans that left these prints were bipedal and had big toes in line with the rest of their foot. This means that these early human feet were more human-like than ape-like, as apes have highly divergent big toes that help them climb and grasp materials like a thumb does.
The footprints also show that the gait of these early humans was “heel-strike” (the heel of the foot hits first) followed by “toe-off” (the toes push off at the end of the stride)—the way modern humans walk.
The close spacing of the footprints is evidence that the people who left them had a short stride, and therefore probably had short legs. It is not until much later that early humans evolved longer legs, enabling them to walk farther, faster, and cover more territory each day.
How do we know these are early human footprints?
The shape of the feet, along with the length and configuration of the toes, show that the Laetoli Footprints were made by an early human, and the only known early human in the region at that time was Au. afarensis.
In fact, fossils of Au. afarensis were found nearby to the footprints and in the same sediment layer, telling scientists that Au. afarensis was in the area at the same time the footprints were left.”
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/footprints/laetoli-footprint-trails
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