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Ok-Rice-5377 t1_isb035h wrote

Reply to comment by justforthearticles20 in Superhighway of ancient human and animal footprints in England provides an 'amazing snapshot of the past' by shyleader

Hmm, I'm pretty sure humans were around 8,500 years ago. I'm a bit rusty with my anthropology, but I think humans have been around < 1,000,000 but more realistic estimates are around 200,000 years.

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get_schwifty t1_isb3ztv wrote

> Using pollen in sediment layers, the scientists dated the footprints to between 850,000 and 950,000 years ago. This age means the footprints may have been left by Homo antecessor, an early human species known to be present in Europe at that time.

Definitions for this are a moving target. They’re sometimes called “archaic humans”, and some include them as part of Homo sapiens. They use trinomials to make a distinction between subspecies like antecessor and neanderthalensis, making us Homo sapiens sapiens.

Another common way to classify them would be Hominin, which includes all of those archaic species, our immediate ancestors, and us. It used to be Hominid, which now is more broad and includes chimps, gorillas, orangutans, etc.

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justforthearticles20 t1_isb08t6 wrote

The linked article incorrectly says 900,000 year old human tracks were found "Nearby".

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Ok-Rice-5377 t1_isb1icy wrote

You are correct, sorry about that! The 900,000 year old track's article uses the word Human also a few times, but then clarifies and says Homo Antecessor; which is in fact an ancestor to Humans, but are not Homo Sapiens themselves.

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Sketchy-Fish t1_isdqrl3 wrote

Yer of course they were..the time frame for humans has been pushed back a few times..

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