The oldest known humanoid footprints, discovered on the island of Crete back then, are at least 350,000 years older than scientists originally believed. The prehistoric prints found on the seashore of Trachilos village in west Crete are 6.05 million years old, according to new findings.
A scientific study from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tubingen has also concluded that these footprints are the oldest direct evidence of a human-like foot used for walking.
The researchers told reporters that these prints come from a time when Crete was connected to the Greek mainland. They predate by some 2.5 million years tracks in Tanzania attributed to Australopithecus afarensis. The scientists used reliable paleomagnetic data obtained from 61% of the 57 samples, spectral analysis, and biostratigraphic, in order to help in their new analysis of the footprints.
The map below from Nature – Scientific Reports reveals how Crete and mainland Greece were connected millions of years ago.
First discovered by Gerard Gierlinski in 2002, the new dating of these humanoid footprints comes from researchers from Germany, Greece, Sweden, the UK and Egypt led by Uwe Kirscher and German palaeontologist Madelaine Bohme from the university.