Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 27 February 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5918, pp. 1197 - 1201
DOI: 10.1126/science.1168132
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints from Ileret, Kenya

Matthew R. Bennett,1* John W.K. Harris,2 Brian G. Richmond,3,4 David R. Braun,5 Emma Mbua,6 Purity Kiura,6 Daniel Olago,7 Mzalendo Kibunjia,6 Christine Omuombo,7 Anna K. Behrensmeyer,8 David Huddart,9 Silvia Gonzalez9

Hominin footprints offer evidence about gait and foot shape, but their scarcity, combined with an inadequate hominin fossil record, hampers research on the evolution of the human gait. Here, we report hominin footprints in two sedimentary layers dated at 1.51 to 1.53 million years ago (Ma) at Ileret, Kenya, providing the oldest evidence of an essentially modern human–like foot anatomy, with a relatively adducted hallux, medial longitudinal arch, and medial weight transfer before push-off. The size of the Ileret footprints is consistent with stature and body mass estimates for Homo ergaster/erectus, and these prints are also morphologically distinct from the 3.75-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania. The Ileret prints show that by 1.5 Ma, hominins had evolved an essentially modern human foot function and style of bipedal locomotion.

1 School of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK.
2 Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, 131 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
3 Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
4 Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013–7012, USA.
5 Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa.
6 National Museums of Kenya, Post Office Box 40658-00100, Nairobi, Kenya.
7 Department of Geology, University of Nairobi, Post Office Box 30197, Nairobi, Kenya.
8 Department of Paleobiology, MRC 121, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013–7012, USA.
9 School of Biological and Earth Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mbennett{at}bmth.ac.uk

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)