小柯机器人

美国俄亥俄大学医学院Ellison J. McNutt研究小组揭示了坦桑尼亚莱托利早期人类运动多样性的足迹证据。相关论文于2021年12月1日在线发表在《自然》杂志上。

2019 年，研究人员定位、挖掘和清理了场地A的足轨，使用3D摄影测量和激光扫描生成了数字档案。研究人员将这个地点的脚印与美国黑熊、黑猩猩和人类的脚印进行了比较，研究发现它们更像古人类而不是熊类。事实上，狭窄的步幅证实了这是原始双足人类的小型跨步。

然而，A站点推断的脚部比例、步态参数和足迹的3D形态很容易与G站点的脚印区分开来，表明至少有两个具有不同脚和步态的人类分群在莱托利共存。

据悉，1978年在坦桑尼亚Laetoli G地区发现的可追溯到366万年前的双足轨道被认为是人特有双足运动最古老的明确证据。两年前在附近地点A发现的另一条足轨被部分挖掘出来并归因于古人类，但其与熊（熊类）印类似使其对古人类学研究的重要性边缘化，这些足迹的位置变得默默无闻。

附：英文原文

Title: Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania

Author: McNutt, Ellison J., Hatala, Kevin G., Miller, Catherine, Adams, James, Casana, Jesse, Deane, Andrew S., Dominy, Nathaniel J., Fabian, Kallisti, Fannin, Luke D., Gaughan, Stephen, Gill, Simone V., Gurtu, Josephat, Gustafson, Ellie, Hill, Austin C., Johnson, Camille, Kallindo, Said, Kilham, Benjamin, Kilham, Phoebe, Kim, Elizabeth, Liutkus-Pierce, Cynthia, Maley, Blaine, Prabhat, Anjali, Reader, John, Rubin, Shirley, Thompson, Nathan E., Thornburg, Rebeca, Williams-Hatala, Erin Marie, Zimmer, Brian, Musiba, Charles M., DeSilva, Jeremy M.

Issue&Volume: 2021-12-01

Abstract: Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage1,2,3. Another trackway discovered two years earlier at nearby site A was partially excavated and attributed to a hominin, but curious affinities with bears (ursids) marginalized its importance to the paleoanthropological community, and the location of these footprints fell into obscurity3,4,5. In 2019, we located, excavated and cleaned the site A trackway, producing a digital archive using 3D photogrammetry and laser scanning. Here we compare the footprints at this site with those of American black bears, chimpanzees and humans, and we show that they resemble those of hominins more than ursids. In fact, the narrow step width corroborates the original interpretation of a small, cross-stepping bipedal hominin. However, the inferred foot proportions, gait parameters and 3D morphologies of footprints at site A are readily distinguished from those at site G, indicating that a minimum of two hominin taxa with different feet and gaits coexisted at Laetoli.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04187-7

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04187-7

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