Laetoli Footprints

Four foot prints on the surface of a rock

Topic

Resource Type

Level

High School — General High School — AP/IB

Saved By

10 Users

Description

This activity explores an image of fossil footprints at Laetoli, which serves as a phenomenon for learning about fossil evidence and human evolution.

Laetoli, a paleontological site in Tanzania, is famous for its fossil footprints of hominins: a taxonomic group that includes humans and their extinct ancestors. The image shows hominin footprints discovered at Laetoli in 2015. Fossil footprints like these can be used to infer biological information about the organisms that made them.

The “Educator Materials” document includes background information and implementation suggestions for using the image as a phenomenon. The “Student Handout” includes the image and background information.

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.

Student Learning Targets

Examine images of phenomena, make observations, and ask questions.
Collaborate with peers on ideas, ask questions that require higher levels of reasoning, and develop deeper understanding of concepts.
Use fossil evidence to infer biological information about early human ancestors.

Estimated Time

Within one 50-minute class period.

Key Terms

anthropology, bipedalism, hominin, human origins, Mary Leakey, paleontology, trace fossil

Primary Literature

Masao, Fidelis T., Elgidius B. Ichumbaki, Marco Cherin, Angelo Barili, Giovanni Boschian, Dawid A. Lurino, Sofia Menconero, et al. “New footprints from Laetoli (Tanzania) provide evidence for marked body size variation in early hominins.” eLife 5 (2016). https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.19568.

Terms of Use

The resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. No rights are granted to use HHMI’s or BioInteractive’s names or logos independent from this Resource or in any derivative works.