A gap in Africa's fossil record between 8 and 6 million years ago separates fossils of creatures ancestral to both humans and African apes from the first traces of our early ancestor, Australopithecus.
Around 3.5 million years ago abundant fossils of this creature are known. From Hadar in Ethiopia came a remarkable specimen affectionately called 'Lucy', almost half the skeleton of a female Australopithecus afarensis. In the same area many more fossils of these creatures have been found, including a group dubbed 'the first family'.
Further south at Laetoli, Australopithecus footprints have been found, showing that they walked upright, a finding confirmed by skeletal details of Lucy and her kind. Australopithecus afarensis were still equally adept at climbing trees although they were now beginning to explore the potential of ground living in bush and woodland savannah.
A million years later, southern and East Africa were home to a variety of different ground-living hominids whose teeth show they eating different foods. Slightly built Australopithecus africanus lived on fruit and other soft plants; A. robustus, living in drier savannah, ate a tougher diet of seeds and leaves for which they had massive grinding jaws. A. afarensis were still around, feeding on woodland plants. And in East Africa the first members of our own genus, Homo, were appearing.
