Dating strategies have now shown them to be more than six million years old. The dating of the Cretan footprints for that reason sheds brand-new light on the early evolution of human perambulation more than six million years back. Six million years back, Crete was linked to the Greek mainland through the Peloponnese. The research study in addition confirms current research study and theses of the Böhme group, according to which 6 million years ago the European and Near East mainland were separated from damp East Africa by a reasonably brief growth of the Sahara. Current research in paleoanthropology likewise recommended that the African ape Sahelanthropus could be ruled out as a biped, and that Orrorin tugenensis, which came from in Kenya and lived 6.1 to 5.8 million years earlier, is the oldest pre-human in Africa, Böhme says.
The dating of the Cretan footprints therefore sheds brand-new light on the early advancement of human perambulation more than 6 million years earlier. “The earliest human foot utilized for upright walking had a ball, with a strong parallel big toe, and successively shorter side toes,” Per Ahlberg, professor at Uppsala University and co-author of the research study, explains.
Six million years back, Crete was connected to the Greek mainland by means of the Peloponnese. According to Professor Madelaine Böhme, “We can not rule out a connection in between the producer of the tracks and the possible pre-human Graecopithecus freybergi.” Several years ago, Böhmes team determined that previously unidentified pre-human types in what is now Europe on the basis of fossils from 7.2 million-year-old deposits in Athens, just 250 kilometers away..
The research study furthermore verifies current research and theses of the Böhme group, according to which six million years ago the European and Near East mainland were separated from humid East Africa by a relatively quick growth of the Sahara. The team arrived at an age of in between 500 and 900 million years before present when dating dust-sized mineral grains.
Recent research in paleoanthropology likewise recommended that the African ape Sahelanthropus could be ruled out as a biped, and that Orrorin tugenensis, which originated in Kenya and lived 6.1 to 5.8 million years back, is the earliest pre-human in Africa, Böhme says. On the other hand, the second-phase sealing off of the continents by the Sahara 6 million years back might have enabled a separate advancement of the African pre-human Orrorin tugenensis in parallel with a European pre-human.
Recommendation: “Age restraints for the Trachilos footprints from Crete” by Uwe Kirscher, Haytham El Atfy, Andreas Gärtner, Edoardo Dallanave, Philipp Munz, Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, Athanassios Athanassiou, Charalampos Fassoulas, Ulf Linnemann, Mandy Hofmann, Matthew Bennett, Per Erik Ahlberg and Madelaine Böhme, 11 October 2021, Scientific Reports.DOI: 10.1038/ s41598-021-98618-0.
Tracks in the sand: One of over 50 footprints of predecessors of early human beings determined in 2017 near Trachilos, Crete. Dating strategies have now shown them to be more than six million years old. Credit: University of Tübingen
Six million-year-old fossilized footprints on the island reveal the human foot had actually started to develop.
The oldest recognized footprints of pre-humans were discovered on the Mediterranean island of Crete and are at least six million years old, says a worldwide group of researchers from Germany, Sweden, Greece, Egypt and England, led by Tübingen scientists Uwe Kirscher and Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. Their study has actually been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Using geophysical and micropaleontological techniques, scientists have actually now dated them to 6.05 million years before the present day, making them the earliest direct evidence of a human-like foot used for strolling. “The tracks are almost 2.5 million years older than the tracks attributed to Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) from Laetoli in Tanzania,” Uwe Kirscher states.