About 1.5m years in the past a big-toothed cousin of prehistoric people walked briefly alongside a lakeside in Kenya, footprints marking the muddy flooring. However they weren’t our handiest ancestor at the scene: treading the similar flooring was once the early human Homo erectus.Researchers say an research of fossilised footprints came upon in deposits of the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, counsel the marks had been made via two other species at the human circle of relatives tree who had been in the similar position inside hours or days of one another.Whilst skeletal fossils have in the past advised those species can have coexisted, the timespans they are able to be dated to, and the scale of the deposits they’re present in, are too huge to pin down interactions.“That is the primary direct snapshot of the 2 species in combination at the identical instant panorama,” stated Dr Kevin Hatala, the primary creator of the analysis from Chatham College in the USA.Writing within the magazine Science, Hatala and associates reported how, along side fossilised tracks from birds and different animals, they came upon a continuous set of footprints within the deposits made via a unmarried hominin person.The stride period of the trackway, they famous, advised that particular was once strolling at a modestly speedy tempo. On the other hand, the impressions differed from the ones noticed in trendy people, with regards to foot anatomy and the patterns of touch made via strolling.As an alternative, they stated, the impressions seemed to are compatible with footprints anticipated from Paranthropus boisei, a species often referred to as Nutcracker Guy in connection with its massive tooth, which isn’t a human ancestor however sits on an aspect department of our circle of relatives tree.“There are sides in their massive toe anatomy, particularly, that appear in line with the patterns that we see within the footprints,” stated Hatala.The staff additionally discovered 3 separate prints shut via that had been in several orientations to this trackway.One of the crucial prints discovered within the Turkana Basin. {Photograph}: Kevin G HatalaThese, the researchers stated, did seem very similar to the ones noticed in trendy people, suggesting they had been made via Homo erectus, an ancestor of our personal species that lived within the area on the time.“I’d be expecting the 2 species would had been mindful of one another’s life on that panorama, and so they almost certainly would have recognised each and every different as being ‘other’,” stated Hatala. “This raises quite a lot of interesting questions on how they’d have interacted, and we don’t have all of the ones solutions but.”The researchers added that after they seemed again at different examples of fossilised hominin footprints present in east Turkana from a equivalent time frame, they realised some additionally confirmed indicators of getting been made via two other hominin species.Prof Chris Stringer, the pinnacle of human origins on the Herbal Historical past Museum in London and who was once no longer concerned within the paintings, described the analysis as interesting, noting that whilst it was once unattainable to be totally certain which species made the tracks, the staff have been cautious in assessing the chances.“It’s superb that those early human relations can now be positioned immediately in a lakeside panorama, strolling and wading on rainy surfaces, and almost certainly feeding at the plant and animal assets there,” he stated. “[The authors] counsel that the 2 species with their other diets had been almost certainly no longer competing strongly at the moment, therefore their shut and tolerant proximity in time and area.”
