Home Page Science Frontiers
ONLINE

No. 3: April 1978

Issue Contents





Other pages



 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

 

Scientifically Acceptable Fossil Footprints

Mary Leakey has announced the discovery of fossil footprints made by prehuman ancestors more than 3.5 million years ago at Laetolil, 25 miles southwest of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The hominoid had apparently walked across slightly moist sand, and the prints were soon filled with volcanic ash. The prints were made by feet shorter and wider than those of modern humans; but the big toe definitely points forward and is not splayed as in apes.

(Anonymous; "Footprints in the Sands of Time," New Scientist, 77:483, 1978.)

From Science Frontiers #3, April 1978. � 1978-2000 William R. Corliss