Laetoli

Laetoli is a fossil locality in northern Tanzania known for 3.66-million-year-old hominin footprints preserved in volcanic ash and other Pliocene remains.

Laetoli footprints: A trackway of 3.66-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania, attributed to early hominins. These tracks made the locality famous and preserve evidence of upright walking.
Volcanic ash: Fine particles and fragments expelled during volcanic eruptions. A wet ash layer at Laetoli took impressions of passing animals.
Mary Leakey: A British paleoanthropologist known for major fossil and archaeological discoveries in East Africa. Her team excavated the Laetoli footprints in 1978.
Bipedalism: Locomotion using two legs as the primary means of movement. The Laetoli tracks provide direct evidence of ancient hominin bipedal walking.
Australopithecus afarensis: An extinct hominin species that lived in eastern Africa roughly 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago. This species is widely associated with the hominins that made the Laetoli footprints.
Tuff: Rock formed when volcanic ash and other ejecta become compacted and cemented. The footprint-bearing layers hardened into tuff, preserving the impressions.
Louis Leakey: A Kenyan-British paleoanthropologist whose research helped establish East Africa as a center of human origins research. His work and research network helped shape the investigations that reached Laetoli.
Human evolution: The evolutionary history of humans and their ancestors. Laetoli anchors evidence about locomotion early in that history.
Laetoli hominin mandible: A fossil lower jaw from Laetoli attributed to an early hominin. It is among the locality’s fossil evidence for hominin presence beyond the trackways.
Fossil footprint: A preserved impression of an organism’s foot or track in sediment or rock. Laetoli’s trackways are a celebrated example of this fossil type.

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