Surprising Fossil Signs Show Two Species of Hominin Existed 1.5 Million Years Ago

About 1.5 million years ago, two human relatives of two different species walked along the shore of an ancient lake. Researchers know this because hominin footprints turned into fossils in the mud, alongside images of large birds that lived in the surrounding area.

Steps are taken by Homo erectus again Paranthropus boiseilong-extinct species that shared eastern Africa in the past. Together, footprints are a fascinating window into the lives of our closest relatives and ancestors. The drawings show how hominins came together when they first appeared in ancient Africa; according to the research team, if the hominins who made the prints did not overlap at the site, they crossed over within hours of each other. The team’s research was published today on Science.

“In biological anthropology, we’re always interested in finding new ways to extract behavior from the fossil record, and this is a great example,” said Rebecca Ferrell, program director at the National Science Foundation, in a Rutgers University release. “The team used state-of-the-art 3D imaging technology to create a completely new way of looking at footprints, helping us understand human evolution and the roles of cooperation and competition in shaping our evolutionary journey.”

Homo erectus it came out of Africa and reached the east of Asia; A separate paper published earlier this year revealed that Flores’ “favorites” (Homo floresiensis) descended from Homo erectus in Java. Homo erectus it ended about 110,000 years ago, however P. boisei died about 1.2 million years ago—shortly after making tracks on the ancient coast of Kenya.

The prints were discovered in 2021 by a team led by paleontologist Louise Leakey. A field team excavated the documents the following summer.

“These are the only two hominins currently known from the Turkana Basin at this time,” said Kevin Hatala, an evolutionary biologist at Chatham University and lead author of the paper, in an email to Gizmodo. “Homo habilis known only from fossils slightly older than these, and it is possible that they lived at the same time and their remains have not been found. But at the moment, we believe it is very foolish to speculate that the footprints were made by H. erectus again P. boisei.”

Although the general consensus is that Homo erectus the ancestor of Homo sapiens, Paranthropus it has a different story. Paranthropus he is an extinct human relative with the widest face and largest teeth of any vermin. Last year, a research team found a three-million-year-old set of tools on its side Paranthropus Fossils, indicating that our hominin relatives may have been killing predators long before anatomically modern humans emerged.

Both species were upright, bipedal—they walk on two legs—and fast. And of course, they both use the old lakeside area near the modern Lake Turkana.

“This proves beyond any question that it was not just one, but two different hominins that were walking in the same place, literally a few hours apart,” said Craig Feibel, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and co-author of the paper, as well. release. “The idea that they lived at the same time may not be surprising. But this is the first time to show it.”

As noted, the fact that these two species coexisted is not a big surprise. Our species, Homo sapienss, evolved about 300,000 years ago and lived at the same time as several other hominins, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and the aforementioned. H. erectus. Moreover, there was H. and led, H. floresiensis, H. luzonensisit is possible H. heidelbergensisand the yet-to-be-named “hobbit” species described earlier this year. Evidence of any of these hominins living in the same area at the same time is virtually non-existent, except that H. sapiens mixed with both Neanderthals and Denisovans, as evidenced in our DNA.

Evidence of Homo erectus again P. boisei cohabitation has come before; in 2020, the skull cap of H. erectus a small child was found next to the cranial remains P bosei in South Africa’s Drimolen, part of a group of places known as the Cradle of Humankind.

“The research of Hatala et al. and provides an interesting perspective on the behavioral nature of modern hominin species,” said William Harcourt-Smith, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, in an accompanying article in Perspectives. “Based on the closeness of the different steps, the authors argue that H. erectus and P . boiseii lived in the same habitat and probably had low levels of competition between each other,” he wrote. The distinct differences in diet and life history between the two species make this a “interesting proposition” indeed, Harcourt-Smith added.

A wealth of fossil evidence can help explain the interactions of ancient hominins that clearly overlap not only in time, but in space. Many questions remain about how hominins used their environment, and how they may have interacted with each other. But the site of the recently studied remains is a wonderful window into our family history.