How do you film a class segment about the Laetoli footprint trail without going to Tanzania to film? By going to the beach, of course!
Laetoli, if you are not aware, is the ~3.5-3.6 million year old site in Tanzania, where, in 1976, researchers uncovered a series of footprints, including a set made by a few hominins. The site is important in that it provides a flip-side to fossil-based evidence for bipedality in Australopithecines. Whereas fossil evidence (such as A.L. 129-1, or “Lucy” A.L. 288-1) gives us morphology and tasks us with reconstructing function (i.e. movement), the footprints at Laetoli give us evidence of function and task us with reconstructing the morphology necessary to produce such evidence.
So this morning I filmed a few sections for 207x (Introduction to Human Evolution) on Revere Beach in Boston, making footprints and talking about them. As you can see, it was a pretty time and location for some human evolution video production.
Not from an Australopithecine…
