Where is laetoli

Date of Discovery: Chickens, chimpanzees, and you - what do they have in common? Grandparents are unique to humans How strong are we? Humans are handy! Humans: the running ape Our big hungry brain! Our eyes say it! So ephemeral are the traces of our passing. Yet, astonishingly, the tracks of extinct animals have survived for aeons under unusual circumstances of preservation, recording a fleeting instance millions of years ago. Preservation of such traces occurs under conditions of deep burial whereby the sand or mud into which the prints were impressed is changed into stone, later to be exposed by erosion.

When, in , fossil footprints of an extinct human ancestor were discovered during a palaeontological expedition led by Dr. Mary Leakey, scientific and public attention was immense. The prints, partly exposed through erosion, were found at the site of Laetoli, to the south of the famed Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where Louis and Mary Leakey did their pioneering work researching human evolution.

The footprints at Laetoli, dated at around 3. At Olduvai, Laetoli, and other sites in Africa and beyond, the search for evidence regarding human development has focused on the discovery of fossilized bones.

But while fossils have been the primary means of understanding our past, they cannot yield all the answers to the great debates that have beset the study of human evolution.

One debate has been over the development of the brain in relation to our ancestors' ability to walk upright. Since Darwin's time it was thought that once upright posture and bipedalism had developed, the hands were then free to evolve manipulative skills. Stone toolmaking, it was supposed, was the critical factor in the emergence of early man. This view, however, was not universally accepted.

Some believed that the brain, not erect posture, led the way. Although functional analysis of hominid bones from Africa pointed to early bipedalism, the fossils themselves could not provide the definitive answer. The Laetoli trackway settled the issue. Excavated by Mary Leakey and her team in and , the trackway consists of some 70 footprints in two parallel trails about 30 meters long, preserved in hardened volcanic ash.

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The only known hominid fossils of that age in that location are those of Lucy and her kind, the small-brained but upright-walking hominids classified as Australopithecus afarensis. Some analysts have noted that the smaller of the two clearest trails bears telltale signs that suggest whoever left the prints was burdened on one side -- perhaps a female carrying an infant on her hip. While the detailed interpretation of the prints remains a matter of debate, they remain an extraordinary and fascinating fossil find, preserving a moment in prehistoric time.

Format: QuickTime or RealPlayer. Length: 3 min, 20 sec. Topics Covered: Human Evolution.