CANADA: A new skeleton explored in South Africa 21 years back known as ‘the Little Foot’ is claimed by the researchers to be 3.67 million years old. It means it is older than Lucy and considered to be the oldest from the Australopithecus family.
Australopithecus is considered to be the oldest ancestor of the modern man. Until now, Lucy, the species from the same branch, was considered to be the primitive of man’s evolution to be lived about 3.2 years ago. It was first discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.
The area where these excavations were taking place, the team of researchers also discovered some stone tools that is believed to be 2.18 million years old, considered to be the oldest stone tools discovered till date.
According to the Professor Ronald Clarke, who discovered Little Foot, “It demonstrates that the later hominids, for example, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus did not all have to have derived from Australopithecus afarensis. We have only a small number of sites and we tend to base our evolutionary scenarios on the few fossils we have from those sites. This new date is a reminder that there could well have been many species of Australopithecus extending over a much wider area of Africa.”
Due to small size of the bones, Dr Clarke dubbed it as “Little Foot”, which attracts media attention around the world in 1998. A rigorous excavation work unearthed parts of pelvis, foot, ribs and vertebrae with forearm and hand in articulation.
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