Muddy footprints found beside Lake Turkana, Kenya reveal two ancient hominin species were once neighbors 1.5 million years ago.

About 1.5 million years ago, individuals of two different species in the human evolutionary lineage trudged on a muddy lakeshore in northern Kenya, leaving behind intersecting trackways alongside the footprints of antelopes,

The footprints were left in the mud by two different species “within a matter of hours, or at most days,” a co-author of the research study said.

A discovery in northern Kenya hints that two extinct species that were our ancient relatives shared the same habitat and possibly interacted.

Pictured above is a fossil footprint believed to have been created by a hominin species known as Paranthropus boisei, one of 12 such footprints unearthed in Kenya that date back 1.5 million years. The dig took place in 2022, when Hatala and his colleagues ...

Researchers discovered 1.5-million-year-old footprints in Kenya's Turkana Basin, revealing coexistence of Paranthropus boisei and Homo erectus. The prints, showing distinct walking patterns, provide direct evidence of the two species' interaction and environment,

Found at Koobi Fora near Lake Turkana, the footprints show that *Paranthropus boisei* and *Homo erectus* shared the same habitat, offering new insights into their coexistence and evolutionary paths.**

Footprints preserved on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya seem to be from two ancient human species, showing they lived there at the same time about 1.5 million years ago

The research included professors Kevin Hatala from Chatham U. in Pittsburgh and Craig Feibel of Rutgers and showed two human species might have competed or cooperated.

Newly discovered 1.5-million-year-old footprints reveal how two extinct human species crossed paths within hours of each other.