A foot fossil suggests a second early human relative lived alongside Lucy

In 2009, Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team were combing the desert landscape of Burtele, a paleontological site in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, when Stephanie Melillo found something remarkable: an ancient, humanlike foot bone.

“It was half of the fourth metatarsal ray,” says Haile-Selassie, a paleoanthropologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, referring to the bone that connects to the fourth toe. “When she came over and showed it to me, I just told her, go back, the other half should be there.”

#newsletter-helper svg { width: auto; fill: #f1563e; } #newsletter-helper { display: flex; border-top: 1px solid gray; padding-top: 10px; padding-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; max-width:

→ Continue reading at Science News

More from author

Related posts

Advertisment

Latest posts

Here are 3 big ideas to combat climate change, with or without COP

Belém, Brazil — The Amazon rainforest is a poster child for the perils of climate change. Deforestation and warming temperatures threaten to push the iconic...

Listen to the crackle of Martian ‘mini-lightning’

When the wind blows on Mars, electricity crackles through the air. For the first time, scientists have detected electricity in the Red Planet’s atmosphere....

The Trump Administration’s Data Center Push Could Open the Door for New Forever Chemicals

In recent months, the Trump administration has opened a deregulatory floodgate in the name of building more data centers. Among other things, this has...