Italians find our oldest footprints

Italian scientists have identified humankind's oldest footprints. They were trodden in volcanic ash from the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy at least 325,000 years ago by relatives of modern humans who walked upright and used their hands only to steady themselves on difficult descents.

Paulo Mietto of the University of Padua reports today in the journal Nature that the tracks had been made by people less than 1.5 metres (5ft) tall.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said yesterday that the footprints were probably those of women or children, when the first Europeans were evolving into the Neanderthal lineage.

"The preservation of such prints is very much a chance event," he said. "They must have been covered up very quickly after they were made and only recently re-exposed, or they would have been eroded away."

Fossil dinosaur tracks are relatively common; dinosaurs roamed the planet for more than 150m years. Members of the genus Homo, however, have existed only for 2m years.

A volcanic flow in Laetoli, Tanzania, has footprints made 3.7m years ago, probably by a hominid ancestor called Australopithecus.

The three sets of Italian tracks descend a slope with an angle of 80 degrees in places. They have the same direction but different patterns of stride. Researchers identified the impressions made by the heel, ball of the foot and big toe.