Fossils find gives clues to origin of human walking

Published on Sunday 6 March 2005 02:34

SCIENTISTS have discovered four-million-year-old fossils that they claim are the remains of the earliest human forebear to have walked on two legs.

The team of US and Ethiopian scientists discovered the fossilised hominid, which lived in the wooded grasslands of the Horn of Africa, at a new site called Mille in the northeastern Afar region of Ethiopia.

They say the fossils form a link between older creatures with more ape-like characteristics and the upright-walking species Australopithecus afarensis, which was identified when a 3.2-million-year-old fossil, later named Lucy, was uncovered in 1974 at a site just 37 miles away from Mille.

The latest find includes a complete tibia from the lower part of the leg, parts of a thighbone, ribs, vertebrae, a collarbone, pelvis and a complete shoulder blade, or scapula.

There is also an anklebone which, with the tibia, proves the creature walked upright, according to Bruce Latimer, director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the US.

Latimer, co-leader of the team that discovered the fossils, said: "This new discovery will give us a picture of how walking upright occurred. It is a once in a lifetime find."