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Ancient Footprints Reveal Path to Humanity

Tracks in Kenya are 1.5 million years old

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 28, 2009 3:12 AM CST

(Newser) – Scientists have unearthed ancient footprints that reveal humanity's ancestors walked with a modern stride as long as 1.5 million years ago, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Researchers believe the tracks—left beside a muddy river bank in Kenya and preserved when the river changed course—belong to human ancestor Homo erectus, and provide vital clues to how humanity began.

Scientists say the prints were made by creatures that walked exclusively upright on feet much like our own, allowing them to travel easily across open spaces and even to run long distances. The researchers say they were stunned to uncover such familiar-looking footprints in the ancient sediment. "These could quite easily have been made on the beach today," said one archaeologist.

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Professor Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University poses on the main fossil footprint trail in Ileret, Kenya. (AFP/Getty Images)

This undated image, courtesy of Professor Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University, shows a fossil footprint in Ileret, Kenya believed to be 1.5 million years old. (AFP/Getty Images)

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It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden something that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site. - archaeologist David Braun

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 7 comments

Forderon

Mar 1, 2009 8:10 PM CST

Uh dude, he was being sarcastic

Guest

Mar 1, 2009 1:17 AM CST

You know exactly what I was thinking.

Guest

Feb 28, 2009 9:13 PM CST

Surely every right-thinking person knows we've only been around for 6,000 years!????? That is the most stupid thing I have read in the year of 2009! Do I need to throw a fossil at you? Or are you one of those new age Christians that believes the Devil planted fossils on Earth? LOL. Hominids have been around roughly 3 million years of which we are a part of the hominid family! Homo Sapiens have been around roughly 60-70 thousand years jack sauce.

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Philadelphia Inquirer (Source Grid »)
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Footprints are the earliest sign of modern feet
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Find fills a gap in knowledge of humanity's development
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Kenya • archaeology • fossil • anthropology • Homo erectus • prehistoric

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Ancient Footprints Reveal Path to Humanity