Two species of hominins lived simultaneously 1.5 million years ago

It has been admitted that in the past, in the Pliocene and Pleistocene, several species of hominins coexisted simultaneously. However, the scarcity of fossils means that there is no solid evidence. Now, in the Turkana basin (Kenya), 1.5 million years of footprints have been found, carried out at the same time or on the same day; the researchers estimate that the authors belonged to two different species of hominins: Homo erectus and Paranthropus boilei.

The study has been published in Science. The deposit is called FE-22 and from the analysis of the footsteps it can be deduced that the thumb of P. boilei moved more and, therefore, its gait was not as effective as that of URL0. On the contrary, the foot of the latter was more suitable for walking and running long distances.

In addition, they suggest that the presence of footsteps in the same site demonstrates that they were walking in the same ecosystem and that they probably had differentiated strategies to live in the same place. Many complementary evidence of the time and place, such as fossils and animal objects, have been taken into account in reaching these conclusions.