1.4-Million-Year-Old Kenyan Footprints Suggest Early Human Relative Was Larger Than Thought

Along the ancient shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, volcanic ash preserved something the fossil record rarely offers: not just the shape of a creature, but the fact of its movement. Footprints dating to 1.4 million years ago now suggest that Paranthropus boisei, a robust early human relative, was substantially larger than its recovered bones implied — and that it did not walk alone. In the gap between what skeletons tell us and what footprints reveal, science is quietly revising one of its oldest portraits of human ancestry.