Brian Villmoare (Anthropology) published an analysis of ancient footprint sites, focusing on the 1.5 million-year-old footprints from Ileret, Kenya. He analyzed the footprints to determine the relative sizes of males and females, to determine when humans made the transition from a single-male, multi-female society to the more pair-bonded societies we see in humans today. The study revealed that earlier Australopithecus, from Laetoli, Tanzania at more than 3 million years old, was more like gorillas, with large males and smaller females, indicating a polygynous society. But by 1.5 million years ago, humans had transitioned to the size differences we see today. This indicates that Homo erectus was likely to have adopted pair-bonding, establishing the trajectory we see in modern humans. Villmoare participated in the excavation of the footprints in 2012. The study was titled and published in the May 22 Scientific Reports.
