Lessons

Coming Soon!

Overview:  The ~3.7 million year old tracks left by early hominins at Laetoli, Tanzania, provide a tantalizing opportunity to explore how current patterns of behavior may be used to understand extinct species. Techniques in this exercise may also be used to estimate current events, such as estimating the height of a suspect from footprints leading away from the scene of a crime.  This lesson should be taught in conjunction with the "Step by Step: The Evolution of Bipedalism" lesson.  Students should have a basic understanding of osteology (i.e., skeletal anatomy).

Objectives:

• To assess the correlation between height, foot length, and stride length
• Determine which correlation (height/foot length or height/stride length) provides a more reliable prediction.
• To understand and apply correlations patterns to the fossil record in order to determine past behaviors and morphologies.

Coming Soon!