Kevin Hatala
@kevinhatala
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Associate Professor of Biology | human evolution, locomotion, anatomy
Pittsburgh, PA
Joined November 2015
Hey bio anth PhD students and postdocs: I've made my successful dissertation (NSF, Leakey, Wenner-Gren) and postdoctoral (NSF) grant proposals open access, in case anyone might find them useful: https://t.co/SEtBdYCJTH.
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Excited for our work exploring behavioural diversity in South African hominins to be out today! https://t.co/mGOcpjBBhB
science.org
Phalangeal bone structure provides evidence for variable locomotor strategies across South African fossil hominins.
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Get excited for #AABA2025 in Baltimore next week! Download the AABA 2025 app and start planning your meeting
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🦶🏻 Newly found footprints show at least two hominid species were walking through the submerged edge of a lake in the Turkana Basin in Kenya at the same time. 🔗 Read more: https://t.co/DwUq5Ev3ae
#NatureAfrica
@kevinhatala
nature.com
Nature Africa - First physical evidence of species coexistence
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In this week's #SciencePodcast🎙️, @kevinhatala joins @mhc205 to discuss fossil footprints unearthed in the Turkana Basin of Kenya. 🎧 Listen here: https://t.co/Q6XbjlN1W4
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📣 AABA is excited to announce two new initiatives to provide funding for our community, the AABA Community Fund and the AABA Presidents’ Fund!
bioanth.org
AABA accepts donations to the General Fund, Community Fund, and Presidents’ Fund. Descriptions of funds are below. Donors may choose specific funds to give to […]
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Newly discovered footprints show that at least two hominid species were walking through the muddy submerged edge of a lake in Kenya’s Turkana Basin at the same time, about 1.5 million years ago. The find in Science provides physical evidence for the co-existence of multiple
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Step into history 👣 Two sets of ancient footprints show a human ancestor, Homo erectus, lived in the same place at the same time as a distant “cousin," Paranthropus boisei ➡️ https://t.co/8nndT2l68y. 📸: Kevin G. Hatala, Chatham University
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Two hominins, one landscape: Footprints from Kenya show two species of early humans walking over the same muddy surface, probably within days of each other. In @NewScientist
https://t.co/EQXbeDXcBg
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My story on how Ancient footprints capture coexistence of two kinds of human ancestor | Science | AAAS
science.org
About 1.5 million years ago, early members of our genus Homo walked along a lakeshore in Africa within hours of another kind of hominin, likely Paranthropus
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In this week's #SciencePodcast🎙️, @kevinhatala joins @mhc205 to discuss fossil footprints unearthed in the Turkana Basin of Kenya. 🎧 Listen here: https://t.co/Q6XbjlN1W4
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Newly discovered footprints show that at least two hominid species were walking through the muddy submerged edge of a lake in Kenya’s Turkana Basin at the same time, about 1.5 million years ago. The find in Science provides physical evidence for the co-existence of multiple
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For a broader overview of this research, see our article in @ConversationUS, written with @behrensakb and @kiurapurity :
theconversation.com
Ancient fossil footprints are the first evidence of two different hominin species − Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei − living in the same place at the same time.
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This wouldn’t have been possible without all of the important contributions of my co-authors, many of whom are not on X but including @behrensakb @peterfalkingham @EMSWHatala @mkirinya @louiseleakey and many from @turkanabasin.
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This raises lots of questions about how co-existence, competition, and niche differentiation influenced this phase of human evolution. At this point there’s no way to know exactly how these species interacted, but lots to investigate in future research!
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We also re-analyzed large similarly aged footprint assemblages from East Turkana, and found evidence of these two different kinds of footprints at multiple sites. It’s possible that these species shared lake margin habitats for more than 100,000 years!
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Our experiments on the modern shore of Lake Turkana show that footprint surfaces dry and crack, are washed out by water, or are trampled within hours to a few days. This means that the footprints were likely made within hours by hominins who lived on the same immediate landscape.
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We found that two isolated prints are human-like, while the long trackway is different and resembles 3.66 Ma Australopithecus tracks from Laetoli. We attribute the Australopithecus-like footprints to P. boisei (left in photo), and the human-like footprints to H. erectus (right).
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Using methods that we developed by using biplanar X-ray and particle simulation to understand how human footprints form (with @peterfalkingham and Steve Gatesy and thanks to @NSF), we analyzed the footprints to see what they might reveal about how these hominins were moving.
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The site preserves one amazing, 12-step hominin trackway as well as 3 additional, isolated footprints of different hominin individuals.
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