A few million years ago, our ancestors stopped climbing trees and started walking upright, on two feet. To work out how and when this happened, researchers look for fossils -- and recently they found a surprising set of foot bones in Ethiopia. The foot is about 3.4 million years old, making it roughly the same age as 'Lucy' and her species, Australopithecus afarensis. But while Lucy's species had feet much like modern humans, the new foot has an opposable big toe, like a chimp. So do the foot bones represent a new species of hominin? Watch the video and decide.
Read the original research paper: www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/nature10922.html
An eclectic blog on evolution & Darwiniana Any opinions are mine, not my publisher's
Written by Mark Pallen.
The book Rough Guide to Evolution,
given to 6000 students via Great Read at Birmingham.
My other blog: bacterial pathogenomics
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Interesting video and paper from Nature
From the Nature video feed: