Footprint evidence for locomotor diversity and shared habitats among early Pleistocene hominins
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: For much of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, multiple hominin species coexisted in the same regions of eastern and southern Africa. Due to the limitations of the skeletal fossil record, questions regarding their interspecific interactions remain unanswered. We report the discovery of footprints (~1.5 million years old) from Koobi Fora, Kenya, that provide the first evidence of two different patterns of Pleistocene hominin bipedalism appearing on the same footprint surface. New analyses show that this is observed repeatedly across multiple contemporaneous sites in the eastern Turkana Basin. These data indicate a sympatric relationship between Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei , suggesting that lake margin habitats were important to both species and highlighting the possible influence of varying levels of coexistence, competition, and niche partitioning in human evolution.
Source: Science
Authors: Kevin G. Hatala, Neil T. Roach, Anna K. Behrensmeyer, Peter L. Falkingham, Stephen M. Gatesy, Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, Craig S. Feibel, Ibrae Dalacha, Martin Kirinya, Ezekiel Linga, Richard Loki, Apolo Alkoro, Longaye, Malmalo Longaye, Emmanuel Lonyericho, Iyole Loyapan, Nyiber Nakudo, Cyprian Nyete, Louise N. Leakey
Institutions: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Chatham University, Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Liverpool John Moores University, Brown University, George Washington University, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Stony Brook University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4404835830