海角大神

You remember 鈥淟ucy.鈥� Meet her colleague. Or her mate?

A set of footprints uncovered in 2015 by Tanzanian archeologists at the renowned northern Tanzanian site of Laetoli, and later analyzed with the help of a team of Italian scientists, has been found to belong to members of the same pre-human species as the fossil skeleton known as Lucy, or the聽Australopithecus afarensis species. The team鈥檚 results were published on Wednesday in the journal eLife.

The 13 footprints, made on volcanic ash that later hardened into rock, were found among another 70 tracks discovered back in 1978 by paleontologist Mary Leakey, notes National Geographic, and together, the tracks are the oldest of their kind.

Scientists have drawn a number of conclusions from the footprints, underscoring their usefulness in revealing biological characteristics.

One of the two individuals responsible for the new tracks 鈥� called聽S1, after the first discovery made at the 鈥淪鈥� site 鈥撀爄s the tallest known member of Lucy's species at 5-foot, 5-inches and around 100 pounds.

The team that authored the report says S1 would have stood out from his group, standing at least 8 inches taller than the individuals who made the other tracks and probably 3 inches taller than another large member of the species found earlier in Ethiopia.

鈥淭he tall individual may have been the dominant male of a larger group, the others smaller females and juveniles,鈥� wrote the researchers. 鈥淭hus, considerable differences may have existed between males and females in these remote human ancestors, similar to modern gorillas.鈥澛�

That could mean that similar to modern gorillas, A. afarensis could have had a social arrangement in which one dominant male lived with a group of females and their offspring, they say.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not new in the sense of 鈥楢-ha!鈥� 鈥� Briana Pobiner of the Smithsonian Institution鈥檚 Human Origins Program, who wasn鈥檛 involved with the study, told National Geographic. 鈥淏ut it is interesting that one of the individuals does seem to be a larger male than had been represented in the Laetoli sample.鈥�

Other scientists disagree: William Jungers, an anthropologist and research associate at the Association Vahatra in Madagascar who wrote a commentary on the study, told the Associated Press in an email that scientists had not recovered enough data to accurately estimate S1鈥檚 height. And Philip Reno, an assistant anthropology professor at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study, said he was unconvinced that S1 was taller than the other large Ethiopian A. afarensis.

The new report comes a few months after other scientists asserted that Lucy died after falling out of a tree, as 海角大神鈥檚 Eva Botkin-Kowacki reported:

This report contains material from聽the Associated Press.