The toes of one of the world’s most important feet nearly slipped through scientists’ fingers. This past year Ronald Clarke, a paleoanthropologist from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, was going through a series of bones taken from a cave 15 years ago- -and not considered remarkable at the time--when he realized that one was from the ankle of a human forerunner. Then he found another bone that fit with the first, and another, and yet another. When he put the pieces together, Clarke was holding the inner left foot, from ankle to toe, of a 3- to 3.5-million-year-old australopithecine, one of our earliest ancestors. It was the most complete ancient foot ever found.
While the back of the foot looks like that of modern humans, the front, particularly the big toe, resembles the grasping toe of a chimpanzee. Such a foot would be adept at clutching branches ...
