The Laetoli footprints
Three hominins walk across wet volcanic ash in Tanzania, and the ash sets like plaster.
- When
- Known to
- ± 30 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
A fall of carbonatite ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano is dampened by rain, walked over, and then baked and buried — preserving a 27-metre trackway of hominin footprints 3.66 million years old, discovered in 1978. The prints show a modern-looking gait with a well-developed arch, a non-divergent big toe and a heel-to-toe stride, in a species whose skeletons still show climbing adaptations. A separate set of prints found nearby indicates a second, differently-walking hominin at the same site. The originals are now reburied, and deteriorating.