Ancient footprints suggest a human relative was surprisingly large
Fossilized tracks found in Kenya indicate that Paranthropus, a distant human relative once thought to be small, may have stood over five feet tall.
In 1978, paleontologists digging in the Koobi Fora region of Kenya discovered a series of large indentations in a 1.4 million year old rock layer. While the marks were initially mistaken for hippo tracks, closer inspection revealed they were left by at least seven individual hominins walking along an ancient lakeshore. These impressions have since challenged long held assumptions about the physical stature of our early relatives.
Continue Reading in App
2 more paragraphs · plus a 3-question quiz