I know some Kossacks like stories about ancient hominins. Saw this article and thought it might be entertaining.
www.science.org/…
It is a quasi-pay site in that you’re allowed 5 free articles a month before they request a subscription, so most of you should have access.
Briefly:
- In 1976, a team led my Mary Leakey discovered 5 unidentified footprints, preserved in volcanic ash, in northern Tanzania
- Bipedal — could be bear, chimp, hominin
- Labeled as “Site A”
- In 1978, same team discovers footprints in the same layer of volcanic ash 1 km from Site A.
- Fairly certain these footprints are from close relatives of Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis)
- Footprints differ from Site A
- Labeled as “Site G”
- Site A — Forgotten
- Forty years later, a graduate student became interested in the forgotten Site A tracks as she worked on her thesis
- Using a nearby bear rescue site, showed the tracks could not have been made by bears
- Also eliminated chimps
- She and a team return to Tanzania, and are able to relocate the original tracks at Site A!
- A cast of the footprint shows a prominent big toe next to a smaller secondary toe, a hominin indicator
- The possible hominin source of the footprints at Site A is still unknown.
- However, given the footprints from Site A and Site G are so different, in the same layer of volcanic ash, two different species of hominins were walking within 1 km of each other within a span of a few days.
Fascinating.