US EditionDigital reconstruction reveals the face of ‘Little Foot,’ a nearly 4 million-year-old human ancestor
Digital reconstruction of Little Foot’s 3.67-million-year-old skull reveals facial features similar to East African Australopithecus, suggesting ancient migration patterns, researchers say.
- On March 2, researchers published a digital reconstruction of Little Foot's face in Comptes Rendus Palevol and questioned its species assignment, suggesting it may not match known Australopithecus species.
- Discovered in the 1990s, Little Foot’s foot bones were first identified in 1994 at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and the rest was recovered from Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa, but the skull was crushed after about 3.67 million years underground.
- Comparing measurements across specimens, researchers used a 2019 synchrotron X-ray scan at the United Kingdom facility and found features resembling East African Australopithecus specimens rather than southern African fossils.
- The peer-reviewed study found that La Trobe adjunct Dr. Jesse Martin said `Our findings challenge the current classification of Little Foot and highlight the need for further careful, evidence-based taxonomy in human evolution.`
- The team says these results point to a patchwork of human evolutionary traits and plan future modeling of teeth and braincase to clarify Little Foot's link to the genus Homo.
38 Articles
38 Articles
A first digital reconstitution of the face of the Australopitheque "Little foot" was created by an international team of scientists.
3.67-Million-Year-Old ‘Little Foot’ Gets New Face Reconstruction, Linking Fossil to East African Hominins
Learn how advanced scanning and 3D reconstruction revealed the face of the Little Foot fossil and new insights into Australopithecus and early human evolution in Africa.
South Africa: A New Face for 'Little Foot', the Most Complete Australopithecus Skeleton to Date
Analysis - What did the face of our ancestors look like 3 million years ago? Meet the reconstructed face of "Little Foot" - the most complete biological Australopithecus specimen that ever existed.
For years, the "Little Foot" skull was almost an impossible puzzle. The fossil, considered the most complete Australopithecus skeleton discovered so far, had been studied for decades, but its face remained unknown. The pressure of the sediments had deformed it so much that it was risky to try to interpret its features directly on the bone. That has changed now. After more than five years of digital work, an international team has managed to reco…
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