Observatory: New Age for the Human Ancestor Little Foot Puts Him Closer to Lucy

An ancient hominid known as Little Foot may have lived at roughly the same time as Lucy, another famous human forebear, a new study has found.

The research, published in the journal Nature, suggests that early hominids may have been far more diverse than previously thought.

Discovered in a cave in South Africa in the early 1990s, Little Foot (named for his tiny feet) was first thought to be about 4 million years old. But later estimates, based on minerals found in the same cave, placed him closer to 2.2 million years old. For years, scientists could not agree.

Now, an international team of researchers has turned to a dating technique that measures levels of aluminum and beryllium in the rock layer holding the fossil. Their conclusion: Little Foot is 3.67 million years old, about half a million years older than Lucy.

If accurate, the new estimate suggests that there may have been many different species of Australopithecus inhabiting a far greater range in Africa than previously thought.

“People like to think of evolution as a straight progression,” said Darryl E. Granger, a geologist at Purdue University and lead author of the study. “But here we’ve got Lucy’s species in East Africa, and at the same time a very different Australopithecine a continent away. What it does is point to the complexity, the bushiness, of the family tree.”

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