© Masao et al. / ELife 2016
MOSCOW, December 14 - RIA Novosti . Scientists have found traces in Tanzania unusually large australopithecines, whose height - 1.65 meters - and weight - about 50 kilograms - were significantly higher than other ape that time, making it a kind of giant, said in an article published in the journal eLife.
"It is surprising that these traces were left of one and the same group of people that went in the same direction at the same speed. Where they went, we certainly do not know. They probably just went around the neighborhood, as did all the other animals, whose footprints imprinted in volcanic sediments Laetolil "- said Cherin Marco (Marco Cherin) from the University of Perugia (Italy).
Traces of an unusually large Australopithecus, which his "contemporaries" could be considered a giant, were found Cherin and his colleagues in the town Laetolil in Tanzania, not far from the place where the famous British female paleontologist MeV Leakey found the earliest known fossilized footprints of ancestors of people off the coast of Lake Turkana .
These traces, whose age was 3.7 million years old, and which are today considered paleontologists left Afar Australopithecus, the first time paleontologists convinced that our ancestors had already moved to the upright posture, despite the fact that they had a small brain and a relatively the modest size of the body.
© Photo: Hatala et al./Scientific Reports 2016
It tells the Cherin, these traces have survived thanks to the fact that at that time in East Africa, there was an accident - Sadiman eruption of the volcano. It covered the neighborhood of the future of Lake Turkana "blanket" from the ashes of several tens of centimeters thick. Soft ash preserved the footprints of our ancestors, was "cemented" the rain, and then covered with a new layer of volcanic emissions, allowing these tracks live up to our days.
It was found that these four Australopithecus open Leakey, was not the only group of hominids, the nearest relatives and ancestors of humans and chimpanzees, which left their traces in this ash. New tracks, according to scientists, were actually found by chance during the construction of the museum near the shores of Lake Turkana directly over prints, Leakey found MeV.
Approximately 150 meters to the north of the famous footprints Cherin and his colleagues discovered a new "trail ape", which this time remained unusually large footprints of Australopithecus male and less large satellite moving along the slopes of the volcano.
Much to the surprise of Cherina, Foot length in larger Australopithecus was equal to or even greater than itself - it exceeded 27 centimeters. If the ratio of weight and height in the holder of these tracks was the same as that of Australopithecus Afar, he actually reached the size of modern humans - his height was 165 cm, weight - about 50 kg.
Height and weight of other Afar Australopithecus was generally much smaller, making the owner of a giant tracks from their point of view. For this reason, Cherin decided to call it "Chewie" - in honor of Chewbacca from "Star Wars", high bipedal primate similar to a large bipedal ape growth of two meters.
Opening "Chewie", according to a paleontologist, he says that mass and growth of our ancestors could vary as much as in modern humans. Moreover, large differences in size between males and females alleged Afar Australopithecus, symbolized in the "Chewie", indicate that the relationship between the sexes could change significantly over the next 3.7 million years of evolution, a shift from the dominance of males in groups toward greater gender equality.
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