Twenty years after it was discovered in an African cave , one of the most authoritative fossils in the quest to demystify human evolution is finally on display . AsSmithsonianreports , Little Foot , anAustralopithecusspecimen go steady back more than 3 million years , was revealed to the populace this month at the Hominin Vault at the University of the Witwatersrand ’s Evolutionary Studies Institute in Johannesburg , South Africa .
Paleontologist Ron Clarke detect the first ivory fragments from the fogey in 1994 . The opus came from the remains of ayoung female ’s feet , hence the nickname . Clarke and his team spent years excavate short Foot bit by mo from the Sterkfontein cave system in South Africa until the bones were fully removed in 2012 . The shattered corpse had been embedded in a concrete - corresponding material called breccia , making them fabulously tricky to retrieve . But the join of the parts is monumental : Little Foot is the most completeAustrolopithecusfossil known to science .
The hominid genusAustrolopithecusplayed an essential early role in the chain of human phylogenesis . Lucy , another famous hominid fossil , is a member of the same genus , but while Lucy is only 40 percentage complete , Little Foot keep back 90 per centum of her skeletal frame , admit her head . It ’s also possible that Little Foot pass by Lucy in age . Most paleontologists concord that Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago , while one analysis place Little Foot ’s age at3.67 million years .
Austrolopithecusis believed to havespawnedHomo , the genus that would finally contain our species . The discovery of Lucy and other fossils have led scientists to designate East Africa as the birthplace of human evolution , but if Little Foot is really as old as tests paint a picture , then South Africa may deserve a more prominent point in the timeline .
[ h / tSmithsonian ]
