Convoluted human evolution:new human footprints 2 (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 02, 2017, 22:54 (2639 days ago) @ David Turell

Another article on the subject of 5.7 million years-old hominin:

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/evolution/footprint-find-on-crete-may-push-ba...

"HUMAN-like footprints have been found stamped into an ancient sea shore fossilised beneath the Mediterranean island of Crete.
"They shouldn’t be there.
"Testing puts the rock’s age at 5.7 million years.
"That’s a time when palaeontologists believe our human ancestors had only apelike feet.
"And they lived in Africa.
"But a study into the Trachilos, western Crete, prints determines them to feature prominent human features and an upright stance.
"And that’s significant as the human foot has a unique shape. It combines a long sole, five short toes, no claws — and a big toe.
"In comparison, the foot of a Great Ape look much more like a human hand.
"And that step in evolution wasn’t believed to have taken place until some 4 million years ago.

***

“'The interpretation of these footprints is potentially controversial,” the study’s abstract admits.
“'The print morphology suggests that the trackmaker was a basal member of the clade Hominini (human ancestral tree), but as Crete is some distance outside the known geographical range of pre-Pleistocene (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago) hominins we must also entertain the possibility that they represent a hitherto unknown late Miocene primate that convergently evolved human-like foot anatomy.”
"Put simply, the study argues there was another — previously unidentified — human-like creature walking the Earth long before we believed it was possible."

Comment: If we split off from Chimps 8+ million years ago, that is not much evolution time to get to hominin!