Scientists announced on Friday that a new geological study of the skeleton of 'Little Foot' shows that he might be an ancestor of humans.
The skeleton was first discovered in the early 1990s in a South African cave, and was given its name for its small foot bones, according to Science Magazine. The study of the cave concluded that Little Foot is at least 3 million years old, which would mean he is old enough to be a direct ancestor of today's humans.
Lauren Bruxelles from France's National Institute for Archeological Research (Inrap), who participated in the study, talked about how the age of Little Foot could confirm South Africa as being the starting point for human evolution, Yahoo! News reported.
Some have said South Africa is too young to have given rise to modern man," Bruxelles said. "We are putting Little Foot and South Africa back in the running."
The age of Little Foot has been a topic of debate among scientists for years. A paper published in 2006 in the journal Science roughly calculated its age at 2.2 million years due to chemical dating of layers of stone around the fossil, according to Yahoo! News.
The Sterkfontein caves do not have volcanic sediments while fossil sites in East Africa do and are easier to date, which puts Little Foot in competition with the specimen "Lucy" for the title of human ancestor. However, Little Foot's skeleton is the most complete skeleton of an Australopithecus ever discovered, making it one of the oldest members of the hominid family to be found, Yahoo! News reported.
Paul Renne, a dating expert at the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California, said the recent study of the geology of the cave "has been long overdue," Science Magazine reported. Renne also talked about the accuracy needed for the dating of the flowstones around Little Foot to confirm its age against the younger proposed dates.
"Without accurate geologic context they are useless," Renne said. "Actually, they are worse than useless because incorrect conclusions may be drawn from them, as seems to have been the case."
