Kenya and Turkana County stand to gain from a discovery of the origins and life of early human Homo erectus. The discovery comes at a crucial time for the government, as it seeks to raise the number of tourists visiting the country to 10 million annually by 2027.
The discovery was announced by researchers in the Journal of Science on Thursday, November 28, indicating that two muddy footprints were left at the Turkana lakeside, suggesting two of our early human ancestors were neighbours some 1.5 million years ago.
According to researchers, the footprints were left in the mud by two different species “within a matter of hours, or at most days,” stated palaeontologist Louise Leakey, co-author of the research.
Scientists previously knew from fossil remains that these two extinct branches of the human evolutionary tree—called Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei—lived about the same time in the Turkana Basin.
The two muddy foot prints found in the Turkana Basin.
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While skeletal fossils have previously suggested these species may have coexisted, the timespans they can be dated to and the size of the deposits they are found in are too large to pin down interactions.
“This is the first direct snapshot of the two species together on the same immediate landscape,” asserted Dr Kevin Hatala, the first author of the research from Chatham University in the US.
But dating fossils is not exact. “It’s plus or minus a few thousand years,” said palaeontologist William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the study.
Writing in the journal Science, Hatala and colleagues reported how, along with fossilised tracks from birds and other animals, they discovered a continual set of footprints in the deposits made by a single hominin individual.
The stride length of the trackway, they noted, suggested that the individual was walking at a modestly fast pace. However, the impressions differed from those observed in modern humans in terms of foot anatomy and the patterns of contact made by walking.
Instead, they said, the impressions appeared to fit with footprints expected from Paranthropus boisei, a species also known as Nutcracker Man in reference to its big teeth, which is not a human ancestor but sits on a side branch of our family tree.
“There are aspects of their big toe anatomy, in particular, that seem consistent with the patterns that we see in the footprints,” said Hatala.
The team also found three separate prints close by that were in different orientations to this trackway.
The discovery will offer a new attraction to the country, and its neighbouring Chalbi Desert will further promote the region as an attractive destination.
Already, the government has begun diversifying tourism offerings, emphasising areas such as eco-tourism, cultural tourism, and sports tourism. Initiatives include improving infrastructure, reducing visa fees, introducing visa-free policies for certain regions, and marketing campaigns to showcase the country’s unique attractions.
An aerial picture of the scientists near the location of the two muddy foot prints found in the Turkana Basin.
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