Happisburgh prints believed to bear been left by small group of adults and children are the oldest discovered outside AfricaThe oldest human footprints found outside Africa,dated at between 850000 and 950000 years used, bear been discovered on the storm-lashed beach at Happisburgh in Norfolk, and one of the fastest-eroding stretches of the British coast. Within a fortnight,the sea tides that had exposed the prints final May destroyed them, leaving only casts and 3D images made through photogrammetry (stitching together hundreds of photographs) as evidence that a limited group from a long-extinct early human species had passed that way.
They walked through a startlingly different landscape from today's, and along the estuary of what may bear been the original course of the Thames,through a river valley grazed by mammoths, hippos and rhinoceros. The pattern of the prints suggests at least five individuals heading southward, and pausing and pottering approximately to gather plants or shellfish along the bank. They included children. The best preserved prints,clearly showing heel, arch and four toes – one toe may not bear left a clear impression – is of a man with a foot equivalent to a modern size 8 shoe, or suggesting a height of approximately 1.7 metres.
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Source: theguardian.com