Posted on 09/01/2017 1:41:22 PM PDT by Red Badger
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Controversial footprint discovery suggests human-like creatures may have roamed Crete nearly 6m years ago
The human foot is distinctive. Our five toes lack claws, we normally present the sole of our foot flat to the ground, and our first and second toes are longer than the smaller ones. In comparison to our fellow primates, our big toes are in line with the long axis of the foot – they don't stick out to one side.
In fact, some would argue that one of the defining characteristics of being part of the human clade is the shape of our foot. So imagine our surprise when we discovered fossil footprints with remarkable, human-like characteristics at Trachilos, Crete, that are 5.7m years old. This research, published in the Proceedings of the Geologist Association, is controversial as it suggests that the earliest human ancestors may have wandered around southern Europe as well as East Africa.
The period corresponds to a geological time interval known as the Miocene. The footprints are small tracks made by someone walking upright on two legs – there are 29 of them in total. They range in size from 94mm to 223mm, and have a shape and form very similar to human tracks. Non-human ape footprints look very different; the foot is shaped more like a human hand, with the big toe attached low on the side of the sole and sticking out sideways.
The footprints were dated using a combination of fossilised marine microorganisms called foraminifera and the character of the local sedimentary rocks. Foraminifera evolve very rapidly and marine sedimentary rocks can be dated quite precisely on the basis of the foraminifera they contain. These indicated an age somewhere in the span 8.5m to 3.5m years. However, at the very end of the Miocene, about 5.6m years ago, an extraordinary thing happened: the entire Mediterranean sea dried out for some time. This event left a clear signature in the sediments of the surrounding areas. The sediments that contain the footprints suggest they probably date to the period immediately before this, at about 5.7m years.
Oldest known footpints. =================================================================
Cradle of humanity
The "cradle of humanity" has long been thought to lie in Africa, with most researchers suggesting that Ethiopia was where the human lineage originated. The earliest known body fossils that are accepted as hominins (members of the human lineage) by most researchers are Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad (about 7m years old), Orrorin tugenensis from Kenya (about 6m years old) and Ardipithecus kadabba from Ethiopia (about 5.8-5.2m years old).
The oldest known footprints, however, were found at Laetoli in Tanzania and come from the next geological time interval, the Pliocene. These are some 3.66m years old and even more human-like than those of Trachilos. The second oldest tracks are those at Ileret made by Homo erectus (1.5m years old), and are little different from the tracks that we ourselves might make today.
If – and for many it is a big if – the tracks of Trachilos were indeed made by an early human ancestor, then the biogeographical range of our early ancestors would increase to encompass the eastern Mediterranean. Crete was not an island at this time but attached to the Greek mainland, and the environment of the Mediterranean region was very different from now.
The discovery comes just months after another study reported the discovery of 7m-year-old Greek and Bulgarian fossil teeth from a hominin ape dubbed "El Graeco". This is the oldest fossil of a human-like ape, which has led some to suggest that humans started to evolve in Europe hundreds of thousands of years before they started to evolve in Africa. But many scientists have remained sceptical about this claim – as are we. The presence of Miocene hominids in Europe and Africa simply shows that both continents are possible "homelands" for the group. In theory, El Graeco could be responsible for the Trachilos foorprints but without any limb or foot bones it is impossible to tell.
Alternative solutions
But there are other ways to interpret the findings. Some might suggest that the distinctive anatomy of a human-like foot could have evolved more than once. The tracks could have been made by a hitherto unknown Miocene primate that had a foot anatomy and locomotive style not unlike our own.
There are examples throughout the fossil record of what is called "convergent evolution" – two unrelated animals developing similar anatomical features as adaptations to a particular lifestyle. However, there is nothing about the Trachilos footprints themselves that suggests such convergence.
Convergence rarely produces perfect duplicates; rather, you tend to get an odd mix of similarities and differences, like you see when you compare a shark and a dolphin for example. Now, imagine if the Trachilos footprints combined human-like characters with a few other characters that simply didn't "fit": for example, that the toes looked human-like but carried big claws. This would be a reason to suspect that the human-like features could be convergent. But the Trachilos footprints don't show any such discordant characters, they simply look like primitive hominin footprints as far as we can tell.
For those unable to see beyond Africa as the "human cradle", these tracks present a considerable challenge, and it has not been easy to get the discovery published. Some have even questioned whether the observed features are footprints at all. However, collectively, the researchers behind this study have published over 400 papers on tracks, so we are pretty confidence we know what they are.
Although the results are controversial, suggesting that the rich East African evidence for early hominids may not be telling the whole story, it's important that we take the findings seriously. The Trachilos tracksite deserves to be protected and the evidence should be debated by scientists.
It is now for the researchers in the field to embark on finding more tracks or, better still, body fossils that will help us to better understand this interesting period of primate diversity, which ultimately led to our own evolution irrespective of where this first happened. The very essence of this type of science is prospection, discovery, evidence-based inference and debate. We are sure that this paper will stimulate debate; let us hope that it also stimulates further discoveries.
But there they are!
Maybe minotaurs can swim, and they hitched a ride.
Who knew?
I don’t think flip-flops are gonna work well on this foot.
On second thought, I have seen similar feet wearing flip-flops at Walmart. Do you know there are no safe spaces at Walmart?
That's where we got crete-ures from.
Not true. They carry a smaller percentage on average, one half to one percent but it is there.
Excellent!...............A++++!..................
Who is Randall Garrett?......................
Wrote a bunch of good stuff although he had a reputation for being a very unpleasant person.
Anyway he wrote The Gandalara Cycle which has much to do with this article. If you can find all seven books read it.
If you turn it 180 degrees, it looks like a sneaker print.
Fossil footprints of early human ancestor stolen from archaeological site in Kasteli, Crete
http://www.tornosnews.gr/en/greek-news/society/27177-fossil-footprints-of-early-human-ancestor-stolen-from-archaeological-site-in-kasteli-crete.html
(Update) Greek police arrest 55-year-old man over theft of 5.7 million-year-old footprints in Crete
http://www.tornosnews.gr/en/greek-news/culture/27213-update-greek-police-arrest-55-year-old-man-over-theft-of-5-7-million-year-old-footprints-in-crete.html
Thanks Red Badger.
shoes, and of course odor-eaters, were made of perishable materials, and probably won’t be found in the fossil record. :^)
...about 5.6m years ago, an extraordinary thing happened: the entire Mediterranean sea dried out for some time. This event left a clear signature in the sediments of the surrounding areas. The sediments that contain the footprints suggest they probably date to the period immediately before this, at about 5.7m years.IOW, this guy got there by boat? :^)
The Earth is Expanding and we don’t know why:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf037/sf037p11.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJfBSc6e7QQ
But there they are!
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And, therefore, the controversy! In academia, if it ain’t wrote down in an approved school text book and backed by a respected leader of a cult of personality in that field, then it can not possibly be true.
The seeming differences from modern human footies could be explained by:
1. No podiatrists back then. Injuries had to heal all on their own.
2. Pushing off on an oblique angle that drove the base of the big toe knuckle and associated toe more deeply into the mud and smeared the print a bit.
The Med has completely dried out (at least) 40 times, the last time was five million years ago. These guys may have walked there.
There is a 2 mile thick salt layer on the bottom of the Med with the sort of salt crystals that forms only when exposed to direct sunlight.
These guys were a few hundred thousand years too early, hence my boat suggestion — but I remembered your interest in the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
Mediterranean Sea filled in less than two years: study [Zanclean flood]
December 9, 2009
https://phys.org/news/2009-12-mediterranean-sea-years.html
""The Atlantic waters found a way through the present Gibraltar Strait and rapidly refilled the Mediterranean 5.33 million years ago in an event known as the Zanclean flood," it said.
I've always suspected similar to this happened during the last Ice Age.
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