Olduvai Hominid number 8 (OH 8) is a

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

ized foot of an early

hominin The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The t ...

found in

Olduvai Gorge The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropology, paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human ev ...

Louis Leakey Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (7 August 1903 – 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai ...

in the early 1960s. Kidd et al. (1996) argued that the fossil assemblage exhibits both ape and human characteristics. The lateral side (i.e. the outside of the foot) contains human-like characteristics while the medial side (i.e. the side towards the midline) contains ape-like features proximally, and human-like features distally. Specifically, the

cuboid In geometry, a cuboid is a hexahedron, a six-faced solid. Its faces are quadrilaterals. Cuboid means "like a cube", in the sense that by adjusting the length of the edges or the angles between edges and faces a cuboid can be transformed into a cub ...

(laterally) is human-like, the talus and

navicular The navicular bone is a small bone found in the feet of most mammals. Human anatomy The navicular bone in humans is one of the tarsal bones, found in the foot. Its name derives from the human bone's resemblance to a small boat, caused by th ...

(medially) are ape-like, and the medial

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

(medially), is human-like. This may be looked upon as a missing link in terms of mid-tarsal joint function. Later fossil finds, as exemplified by the so-called "

Little Foot "Little Foot" (Stw 573) is the nickname given to a nearly complete Australopithecus fossil skeleton found in 1994–1998 in the cave system of Sterkfontein, South Africa. Originally nicknamed "little foot" in 1995 when four ankle bones in a mu ...

" (Stw573 complement this finding (Kidd & Oxnard 2004). Stw573 is a medial column assemblage, consisting of a talus, navicular, medial cuneiform and a first

metatarsal The metatarsal bones, or metatarsus, are a group of five long bones in the foot, located between the tarsal bones of the hind- and mid-foot and the phalanges of the toes. Lacking individual names, the metatarsal bones are numbered from the med ...

stub. The three hindfood bones present a pattern consistent with those of the OH 8 assemblage. Thus the hypothesis of a divergent first ray in the OH 8 assemblage, proposed in Kidd ''et al.'' (1996), is now refuted, and neither fossil assemblage are thought to have this characteristic. Zipfel and Kidd (2006) suggest an integrative model of pedal evolution of caudo-cranial, disto-proximal changes. and Zipfel, DeSilva and Kidd (2009), Zipfel ''et al.'' (2011) with regard to then-recently found skeletal remains of ''

Australopithecus sediba ''Australopithecus sediba'' is an extinct species of australopithecine recovered from Malapa Cave, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. It is known from a partial juvenile skeleton, the holotype MH1, and a partial adult female skeleton, the para ...

'' further argue that the disto-proximal issues of the medial column may also present in the lateral column. Combined, these findings refute the "Hypothetical Prehuman Foot", as predicted by Morton (1935); Morton had predicted an "atavistic" divergent first ray, and a very substantial, robust calcaneus; neither of these predictions are evident from the fossil record as currently available..Bernhard Zipfel, Jeremy M. DeSilva, Robert S. Kidd, Kristian J. Carlson, Steven E. Churchill, Lee R. Berger. The Foot and Ankle of Australopithecus sediba. Science Vol 333 9 September 2011

References

External links

{{commons category, OH 8, Olduvai Hominid 8 Homo habilis fossils Fossils of Tanzania