‘A moment in time’: Fossil footprints shed new light on the extinct ‘Nutcracker Man’ - CNN

What the report says

CNN reports that researchers have reassessed the extinct human relative Paranthropus boisei, often called “Nutcracker Man” because of its large teeth and powerful jaws, using newly analyzed fossil footprints from Koobi Fora in Kenya’s East Turkana region. The species lived in eastern Africa roughly 2.3 million to 1.2 million years ago, and the footprints under study are about 1.4 million years old.

According to the report, scientists identified 21 P. boisei footprints, including seven found during 1978 fieldwork and 14 more uncovered in 2016 and 2023. Their analysis, published Monday in PNAS, suggests the hominin may have been much larger than earlier estimates based mainly on skull and limited skeletal evidence. Instead of average male estimates of about 4.2 feet and 108 pounds, the footprints point to individuals reaching up to about 6 feet tall and 165 pounds.

The track patterns also indicate that eight P. boisei individuals crossed the muddy lakeshore area at roughly the same time, possibly moving together as a group. Lead author Kevin Hatala of Chatham University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology told CNN the tracks offer a direct glimpse of anatomy, movement, behavior and environment. He said the group may have consisted of adult males, while noting possible dangers in the lakeside setting such as hippos.

CNN notes that P. boisei shared the Lake Turkana landscape with Homo erectus for hundreds of thousands of years. The findings matter because footprints can preserve behavior and movement in ways bones cannot, while also complicating older assumptions that larger fossils from this region and period necessarily belonged to Homo erectus rather than Paranthropus.