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The foot bones of a young child who died 3 million years ago show that pre-human babies could both walk straight as modern humans and climb trees like monkeys, researchers said Wednesday
The one-inch-inch fossils come from a skeleton discovered in Dikika, Ethiopia, in 2002 and they delivered invaluable insights about how modern humans evolved from our distant ancestors. A fossil so complete, and having a child's fossil, gives us a whole new window on what it was 3 million years ago, "said Jeremy DeSilva, a paleontologist from the University of Dartmouth.
"Skeletons are rare and skeletons of children are even rarer."
Various teams of experts examined various parts of the precious fossil skeleton, which belonged to an australopithecus afarensis who would have been about two and a half years old at his death.
It took years to remove the bones of the foot in the sandstone in which it was embedded, DeSilva told NBC News
. "
The bones were dated about 3.3 million years ago and identified as being the same species as" Lucy ", the most famous example of an Australopithecus. However, the bones of toddlers are about 200,000 years older than Lucy's
DeSilva's analysis shows that Australopithecines have characteristics similar to those of modern humans and modern apes, he reports in Science Advances
"It's a very human foot" , he said. "What is curious is that it still retains some apelike characteristics.The toes are slightly curved and longer than those of a modern human."
For DeSilva, this suggests that the australopithecine juveniles clung to their parents as much as the baby monkeys do today, and that they could climb fast to the trees
. "
" Our camp was divided into two camps , with a group saying that Lucy and his ilk … have still climbed trees … and maybe that means they did not work as well, as we do today. "Now," DeSilva said, "There is another group that says," Look at these bones, they walk like us, and these simian features are just an echo of the past since when their ancestors were still in the trees.
This is because, in part, the bones of the adult Australopithecus have a heavy heel, made to snap into the ground just like modern humans have.
But baby's foot does not have such a heavy heel.
"What did this baby do?" It was that adults were very good walkers, but it is the children who climb these trees, "he added.
be like a game, just as modern children climb on the monkey bars while their parents stay on the ground." But you do not see Neither do leopards roam around the playgrounds, "said DeSilva." Three million years ago, this environment was filled with predators. "
" If you lived in Africa there are 3 millions of years without fire, without structures and without means of defense, you had better get up in a "
In addition, to have children and toddlers who could fit well, without having to wear them, would greatly facilitate parents' travel. Modern human babies are born with feet already made for walking, but the Australopithecus could have developed other ways of walking, says DeSilva, using them like that. "Bones are living tissues, they grow and react, and they change shape depending on what you do to them," he says. "Even though Lucy's humans and adults have thick heels, we have developed them in a completely different way.We would never have known that spirit to this fossil."
DeSilva, who twins who were themselves toddlers when he started studying the fossil, says that he feels a special attachment to it
hard to think when you have your own little ones, " he said. "And yet, he gives us this absolutely extraordinary amount of information about our past and why we are what we are today."
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