"Two footprints" - A footprint hypothesized to have been made by a Paranthropus boisei individual (left) alongside a footprint hypothesized to have been made by a Homo erectus individual (right). Scale bars are 15 cm and 8 cm.CREDIT: Kevin G. Hatala.
Newly found footprints show at least two hominid species were walking through the submerged edge of a lake in the Turkana Basin in Kenya at the same time.
The discovery, from the renowned hominid fossil site of Koobi Fora provides the first physical evidence for the co-existence of multiple hominid lineages in the region dating back to about 1.5 million years ago, a study in Science1 reveals.
The researchers say that although multiple hominin species coexisted in eastern and southern Africa, little was known about the interspecific interactions of the species due to limitations of skeletal fossil record.
Excavating the full footprint surface and using photogrammetry to create 3-D models of the site for analysis, the researchers observed two different patterns on the same footprint surface repeatedly across multiple sites in the Turkana Basin.
A co-author, Kevin Hatala, associate professor of biology at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says the two different patterns of foot anatomy and locomotion, preserved alongside each other on the same footprint surface are most likely to have been produced by two fossil human relatives, Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei.
Hatala tells Nature Africa that “These two species must have lived on the same immediate landscape at the same time, and they probably walked across this footprint surface within hours of each other. This raises important questions about potential competition, and other aspects of interactions between hominin species”.
