Step Into History
Open Access DepositedThe Creation and Critique of an Anatomical Fidelity Rubric for Assessing Quality in Individual Hominin Footprints
Belvedere and Farlow (2018)’s revised scheme for ancient tetrapod footprint preservation quality cannot be directly translated for usage as human footprints only score a 2.2 out of 3 on average regardless of how well preserved they are, which per Belvedere and Farlow (2018)’s model, is too low to be considered as samples and for shape analyses. In this thesis, I evaluate whether sedimentological variables correlate with anatomical fidelity. I suggest ‘grading’ hominin footprints using a modified morphological anatomical fidelity rubric (where S is best, followed by “A”, “B”, “C” and terminated at an “F”). In this thesis, I test the hypothesis that sedimentological variables predict anatomical fidelity scores by applying this novel rubric to published footprints from 19 different sites across three continents (Africa, North America, and Europe). A Cumulative Link Mixed Model (CLMM) and a Proportional Odds Logistic Regression (POLR) model were used to test for a relationship between substrate type and fidelity score and visualized using a raster plot. In these results, we expected to find high-fidelity scores clustered in fine-grained sand and tuff substrates, as suggested in the literature. Results show that there is no straightforward predictable relationship between simple substrate type and anatomical fidelity score. Hominin track fidelity should be reassessed and used in future interdisciplinary studies of the human tracks as revised anatomical fidelity of individual footprints may reveal a more representative and behaviorally realistic hominin footprint record, even if they depict deformational features such as drag marks or incomplete anatomical features. The lack of a rigorous system for grading individual hominin footprints prohibits identification of vulnerable sites which may have unique locomotor behavior, such as running, formed by substrate differences, kinematics, and distortion by natural and anthropogenic causes seen throughout footprint quality in research. Finally, this study encourages the continuation of digital preservation methods (e.g. 3D scanning, photogrammetry, LiDAR) of footprints and associated trackways, even if analyses do not occur for each one. As digital storage becomes more reliable and cheaper, a higher number of fossil footprints will be captured digitally.
Fossilized hominin footprints have been discovered on every continent except for Antarctica, from the oldest site at Laetoli, Tanzania (3.66Ma), to sites only a few hundred years old in the western hemisphere. However, not enough research has been done on how individual hominin footprint fidelity (how much the footprint accurately reflects soft-tissue anatomy) is gauged in the interpretation of footprints. Few tetrapod footprint fidelity models exist
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