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A new hominin foot from Ethiopia shows multiple Pliocene bipedal adaptations

Nature volume 483, pages 565–569 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

A newly discovered partial hominin foot skeleton from eastern Africa indicates the presence of more than one hominin locomotor adaptation at the beginning of the Late Pliocene epoch. Here we show that new pedal elements, dated to about 3.4 million years ago, belong to a species that does not match the contemporaneous Australopithecus afarensis in its morphology and inferred locomotor adaptations, but instead are more similar to the earlier Ardipithecus ramidus in possessing an opposable great toe. This not only indicates the presence of more than one hominin species at the beginning of the Late Pliocene of eastern Africa, but also indicates the persistence of a species with Ar. ramidus-like locomotor adaptation into the Late Pliocene.

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Figure 1: Location map of the Burtele (BRT) vertebrate localities (BRT-VP-1 and BRT-VP-2) in the Woranso-Mille study area.
Figure 2: Pedal elements of BRT-VP-2/73.
Figure 3: Box-and-whisker plots of pedal element comparative ratios in cercopithecines, colobines, chimpanzees, gorillas, humans and fossil specimens.
Figure 4: Principal component analysis (PCA) of metatarsal ratios.
Figure 5: Stratigraphic section at the BRT localities and placement of the BRT-VP-2/73 partial foot skeleton.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage and the Afar Regional State of Ethiopia for permission to conduct field and laboratory research, and the Afar people of the Woranso-Mille area for support in the field. We also thank M. Asnake, R. Bernor, S. Frost, D. Geraads, I. Giaourtsakis, M. Lewis, W. Sanders and L. Werdelin for faunal identifications. We thank B. Passey for aid with isotope analyses; E. Guthrie for unpublished primary data; L. Russell for photography; S. Melillo and H. Gebreyesus for fieldwork; O. Lovejoy, S. Simpson, G. Suwa and T. White for comments and discussions; D. Su for discussions and assistance in statistical analysis; and L. Jellema for assistance in photography. This research was supported by funding from the LSB Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and NSF grants BCS-0234320, BCS-0321893, BCS-0542037 and BCS-1124705.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, 44106, Ohio, USA

    Yohannes Haile-Selassie

  2. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 44106, Ohio, USA

    Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Beverly Z. Saylor & Bruce M. Latimer

  3. Berkeley Geochronology Center, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Alan Deino

  4. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    Naomi E. Levin

  5. Addis Ababa University, PO Box 1176 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,

    Mulugeta Alene

Authors
  1. Yohannes Haile-Selassie
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  2. Beverly Z. Saylor
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  3. Alan Deino
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  4. Naomi E. Levin
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  5. Mulugeta Alene
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  6. Bruce M. Latimer
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Contributions

Y.H.-S. and B.M.L. conducted the description and comparative analysis. B.Z.S., N.E.L. and M.A. compiled the stratigraphic sequence. A.D. conducted the radiometric dating. N.E.L. conducted stable isotope analysis. Y.H.-S. and B.M.L. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yohannes Haile-Selassie.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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This file contains Supplementary Figures 1-7, Supplementary Text, Supplementary Tables 1-10 and Supplementary References. (PDF 5330 kb)

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Haile-Selassie, Y., Saylor, B., Deino, A. et al. A new hominin foot from Ethiopia shows multiple Pliocene bipedal adaptations. Nature 483, 565–569 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10922

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