New evidence of human evolution in primitive foot bones!

The discovery was made 16 years ago, in 2009. Archaeologists found eight bones while digging in Ethiopia, East Africa. Foot bones. Not exactly hominid bones, but close to them. Whose bones those were, it was unclear for so long. More than a decade and a half later, the fog has cleared. New information about the history of human evolution has also been found.

At the time of the bones, no modern humans (Homo sapiens) had emerged, let alone any species of the genus Homo. Modern humans came to Earth only three hundred thousand years ago. In the evolutionary lineage, the genus Homo appeared 2.5-3 million years ago. But these bones from Ethiopia are even older than that. The bones were found in a layer of sedimentary rock that is about 3.4 million years old. At that time, some primitive species of monkeys roamed the earth.

However, these eight bones found in Ethiopia 16 years ago do not belong to Australopithecus afarensis. In 2009, a team of archaeologists led by Arizona State University paleontologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie found these bones. The discovery was officially announced in 2012. However, they are very different from the bone samples of Australopithecus afarensis that have been found in the past. Which makes researchers even more worried.