(16 June 2016) The ” Italian-Eritrean Danakil Expedition”, an international research team coordinated by the University La Sapienza of Rome, has discovered an area of fossilized footprints dating back 800,000 years ago, including what appear to be footprints from ancient human ancestors. The research, coordinated by paleoanthropologist Alfredo Coppa from La Sapienza in collaboration with other Italian universities (Florence, Padua, and Turin) and international Universities (Poitiers, Tarragona, Toulouse), and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Pigorini Museum and Iscr) were made possible thanks to the support of the Eritrean Government and the Italian Embassy in Asmara and thanks to funding from Grandi Scavi Sapienza, Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and international Cooperation, American Museum of Natural History in New York, as well as private sponsors (Enertronica, Eraclya, Piccini Group, I. Messina, A. Lauria and RrTrek). The discovery was made during the last season of excavations at the Aalad-Amo site in the Buia region in the eastern part of Eritrea. The footprints could be the first clearly identifiable Homo erectus footprints, the only hominid species that inhabited the area at that time, a keystone species in human evolutionary history that gave rise to those ancestral species with larger brains who in turn would ultimately evolve into the modern man. “Fossilised human footprints are extremely rare. They were first discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania and date back to 3.7 million years ago, while others have emerged in Ileret and Koobi Fora in Kenya dating back to 1.5million to 1.4million year ago. However, so far no footprint attributable to the Middle Pleistocene has yet been found- according to Coppa –If the ongoing photogrammetric studies and the subsequent findings in the area during the next excavation confirm the origin of footprints found in Danakil; they will be able to tell a great deal about Homo Erectus “. (Red)
