Human Evolution Faces a New Challenge

A trail of footprints discovered in Crete could upend the widely accepted theories on early human evolution. The new prints have a distinctly human-like form, with a similar big toe to our own and a ‘ball’ in the sole that’s not found in apes.

‘What makes this controversial is the age and location of the prints,’ says Professor Per Ahlberg at Uppsala University, one of the authors on the new study. Using the standard battery of tests, and utilizing their regular assumptions, they claim these fossils are 5.7 million years old.

At that point in time, they thought that human ancestors were in Africa, with ape-like feet. According to the new study, however, the new footprints discovered in Trachilos have an ‘unmistakably human-like form.’

These scientists thought that human ancestors of the last few million years directly derived from a genus known as Ardipithecus. And, as a set of ‘reasonably complete’ 4.4 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus fossils discovered in Ethiopia was found to have an ape-like foot, it was thought that the human-like foot had not yet evolved by that time.

The new fossil footprints drive a wedge in the timeline of evolution. The researchers say both the location and the age of the prints are controversial. Evidence for human evolution continues to elude searchers, because it did not happen.