\n<\/p>\n
November 26, 2025<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Mysterious Fossil Foot Belonged to Ancient Human that Lived Alongside \u2018Lucy\u2019<\/p>\n
Newly identified bones tie the mysterious Burtele foot to a new Australopithecus species that lived alongside Lucy more than three million years ago<\/p>\n
By Humberto Basilio edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n The Burtele foot (left) and the foot embedded in an outline of a gorilla foot.<\/p>\n Sixteen years ago a group of anthropologists discovered 3.4-million-year-old fossilized foot bones in Ethiopia. While they suspected the foot belonged to an ancient human that likely lived alongside the species we know as \u201cLucy,\u201d Australopithecus afarensis, without a skull or teeth to analyze, they couldn\u2019t be sure.<\/p>\n What they did know is that unlike Lucy, which walked upright on arched feet like our own, the mystery foot had a grasping toe that was adapted for climbing trees.<\/p>\n Now the same team that discovered the strange foot have finally solved the mystery. In a paper published Wednesday in Nature, the researchers describe other hominin fossils found in the same area as the appendage, which they nicknamed the Burtele foot. The findings confirm that Lucy lived alongside another hominin species called Australopithecus deyiremeda, which behaved rather differently from its A. afarensis peers.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really exciting discovery long-awaited for all of us who have been wondering what that crazy foot was,\u201d says University of Missouri anthropologist Carol Ward, who was not involved in the new study.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only do we have different species living at pretty similar times in a similar area but they are navigating the world in a different way from one another,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The Burtele foot with its elements in the anatomical position.<\/p>\n Anthropologists had suspected that the Burtele foot belonged to A. deyiremeda for years: In 2015 they reported the species\u2019 existence in the region based on jawbones that were 3.5 million to 3.3 million years old. But to conclusively link A. deyiremeda to the Burtele foot, the team needed to return to its discovery site to find more fossils.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been going to the site every year for 20 years now, and the Burtele locality is revisited every year like every locality at the site,\u201d says Arizona State University paleobiologist and study co-author Yohannes Haile-Selassie.<\/p>\n During the most recent visit to Ethiopia\u2019s paleoanthropological site Woranso-Mille, the team made several pivotal discoveries: fragments of pelvic bones and, crucially, a skull and a jawbone with 12 teeth. Identified as belonging to A. deyiremeda based on the shape of the canines and molars, the jaw showed more primitive features than its A. afarensis cousins.<\/p>\n After analyzing the teeth, the team found that their owner ate a different diet to Lucy, preferring to eat trees, shrubs, fruits and leaves\u2014a diet more similar to more ancient hominins, according to the team. By contrast, Lucy\u2019s species typically ate vegetation from mixed woodland areas and grassland plants.<\/p>\n The Burtele foot gives clues to how A. deyiremeda managed to deftly climb trees for sustenance: its long, curved toes and flexible bones suggest a foot well adapted for scaling and holding on to trees. Even the bones of the big toe are slender and curved, suggesting it could wrap around branches.<\/p>\n By combining their finds\u2014the teeth, the dietary analysis and the foot\u2014and taking into account the absence of other hominin fossils at the site, the scientists have concluded that the mysterious Burtele foot belonged to A. deyiremeda.<\/p>\n The finding gives researchers more opportunity to learn about how ancient humans adapted to walk upright, Haile-Selassie says. And, he says, it shows that not all human ancestors walked on two feet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a unique mode of locomotion that underwent various experiments throughout human evolution until the emergence of Homo,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n It could also help settle another debate once and for all: the 2015 discovery of A. deyiremeda was contested, with some scientists arguing the specimens actually belonged to A. afarensis, says paleoanthropologist Donald Carl Johanson, who discovered Lucy in 1974.<\/p>\n The new study instead suggests that A. deyiremeda inherited its foot traits from an ancestral species different from that which gave rise to Lucy\u2019s kind, Johanson says. \u201cAcceptance of a new hominin species always attracts criticism,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether the new evidence will convince a wider audience that A. deyiremeda is a valid species remains to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Knowing that another hominin lived alongside Lucy\u2019s species also challenges the idea that human evolution was relatively linear, Ward says. The new findings also pose questions about how ancient hominins walked.<\/p>\n Haile-Selassie\u2019s team will continue returning each year to the Burtele site to learn more about the biology and geographic distribution of A. deyiremeda. \u201cThere are many questions that we can ask about this species,\u201d Haile-Selassie says.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" November 26, 2025 3 min read Mysterious Fossil Foot Belonged to Ancient Human that Lived Alongside \u2018Lucy\u2019 Newly identified bones tie the mysterious Burtele foot to a new Australopithecus species that lived alongside Lucy more than three million years ago By Humberto Basilio edited by Claire Cameron The Burtele foot (left) and the foot embedded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[723,19963,4175,5237,761,12131,1165,379],"class_list":{"0":"post-35426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-ancient","9":"tag-belonged","10":"tag-foot","11":"tag-fossil","12":"tag-human","13":"tag-lived","14":"tag-lucy","15":"tag-mysterious"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/h2>\n