1.5 million-year-old footprints reveal an early human ancestor walked like us

New Delhi: After almost seven years, paleontologists finally reached to a conclusion that Homo Erectus, an early human ancestor that lived nearly 1.9 million years ago, walked just like the modern humans.

This conclusion came after analyzing a 1.5 million-year-old footprint of Homo Erectus found in 2009 near the eastern shores of Lake Turkana.

A group of researchers led by Kevin Hatala from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and The George Washington University matched the ancient footprints with barefoot localities of the same region and found that the shapes of the footprints from the two sets are statistically indistinguishable.

According to Fox News, Kevin Hatala, the study author, said in an statement that "Our analyses of these footprints provide some of the only direct evidence to support the common assumption that at least one of our fossil relatives at 1.5 million years ago walked in much the same way as we do today."

The findings published in Live Science also draws parallel between the body proportions of Homo Erectus and modern humans including long legs suitable for walking or running on two feet. However researchers are still trying to figure out the style of their walking and how much it resembles with today's humans.