Follow
Little foot is around 3.67 million years old. The fossil of little foot was found at Sterkfontein caves.
The new dating has demolished claims that East Africa is the birthplace of all humanity.
This marks the end of the controversy over the age of the fossil.
Scientists used “cosmogenic nuclide” dating technique to find its age.
This technique measures the radioactive decay rates of aluminium and beryllium in quartz.
The result show that Little Foot, an Australopithecus prometheus hominid, was contemporary of early Australopithecines in Tanzania and Ethiopia.
Professor Ron Clarke, who discovered Little Foot in 1994 said, “There is a belief that East African fossils are the ancestors of everything else, but this is not the case. We have different Australopithecus in South Africa at the same time.”
Little Foot is the only most complete Australopithecines found.
Little foot is recently fully excavated.
Scientist are now cleaning and reconstructing the Skelton.
Stone tools were found at the site and they dated back about 2.18 million years.
“It shows that there was a certain level of intelligence even back then,” said the paper’s co-author Kathleen Kuman.
The new dating brings up the theory that the hominids were widespread throughout Africa about 3.5million years ago.
It also confirms that there might be interactions between hominid species of the east and southern Africa.
“What this shows is that different lines are moving through time, giving rise to new species,” said Professor Chris Stringer, of the British Natural History Museum.
Scientists want to date dig sites in South Africa further so that it can through some light on the little understood period of humankind’s evolution.
