FOSSIL FOOTPRINT

(Source: The Economist)

Homo erectus had a manly gait

Science

THIS footprint is part of one of two series of fossil tracks found recently in Kenya in rocks that are 1.5m years old. It is thought to have been made byHomo erectus, an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens. As the name suggests, Homo erectus is known from its skeleton to have walked upright, but the details of its gait could, in the past, be inferred only from bones, rather than being studied more directly. The new tracks, reported in Scienceby Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University, in Britain, and his colleagues, confirm that Homo erectus walked heel-to-toe as a modern human does, rather than with the ape-like gait of its own ancestors, the australopithecines.