Science Art: Vertical Image of Area A at Happisburgh, from “Hominin Footprints from Early Pleistocene Deposits at Happisburgh, UK,” 2014.

HomininFootprintsHappisburgh

These are the feet of prehistoric humans – little feet of children, big feet of adults. Actually, it’s an infographic based on a photograph based on rather well-preserved mud in Norfolk, England, which captured the shape of feet about a million to 0.78 million years ago. It’s a trace of a trace of a trace of feet.

The site is the “oldest known hominin footprint surface outside Africa.” It’s a group of men, women, boys, and girls from a family of our ancestors. They might be Neanderthals, but were more likely, based on their size, a group of what we now call Homo antecessor.

The circles at the bottom are “rose diagrams” for either 49 or the clearest 29 of the prints, showing how many of them were facing which direction (in both sets, most seemed to be going southeast).