--- title: Human Ancestor ‘Little Foot’ Was Lucy’s Contemporary description: New research indicates that a mysterious skeleton dubbed Little Foot lived around the time of Lucy's species. canonical: https://time.com/3771452/human-ancestor-little-foot/ author: Noah Rayman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-04T15:28:21.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:16.992Z article:section: Science og:title: Human Ancestor ‘Little Foot’ Lived 3.7 Million Years Ago og:description: The findings shed light on the connections between early human ancestors og:url: https://time.com/3771452/human-ancestor-little-foot/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt25012966bf90e01b/698786b45f570ffb45b1619a/little-foot.jpg?branch=production&width=1003&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1003 og:image:height: 564 og:image:alt: Undated handout photo shows the Little Foot skull og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Human Ancestor ‘Little Foot’ Lived 3.7 Million Years Ago twitter:description: The findings shed light on the connections between early human ancestors twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt25012966bf90e01b/698786b45f570ffb45b1619a/little-foot.jpg?branch=production&width=1003&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Human Ancestor ‘Little Foot’ Lived 3.7 Million Years Ago > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=ac875a02-bf1c-4317-bc91-82f18aa2a958&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens? [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/klUn8B3a.m3u8) (2:48)  _Published 2012-10-12. TIME explains the tantalizing evidence that suggests life on Earth may have been seeded from other planets_  by [Noah Rayman](https://time.com/author/noah-rayman/)  ## Noah Rayman Apr 4, 2015 3:28 PM UTC  The Little Foot skull is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters April 1, 2015. The Little Foot skull is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters April 1, 2015. Reuters  by [Noah Rayman](https://time.com/author/noah-rayman/)  ## Noah Rayman Apr 4, 2015 3:28 PM UTC New research indicates that a mysterious skeleton dubbed “Little Foot” [lived around the same time as human ancestor Lucy’s](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14268.html) species, suggesting a diverse landscape of pre-humans in Africa during the same period. Scientists initially believed that Little Foot was far older than Lucy’s species, but according to research published in the journal _Nature_ this week the skeleton is roughly 3.7 million years old. Lucy, who lived about 3.2 million years ago, was an _Australopithecus afarensis_, a species of early upright walkers in east Africa that lived between 2.9 and 4.1 million years ago and is believed to be a direct human ancestor, predating the Homo lineage by more than a million years. Scientists aren’t clear how to categorize Little Foot, who was found in a cave in South Africa in the 1990s. But the age of the skeleton helps shed light on the diversity of the _Australopithecus_ human ancestors. “The most important implication from dating Little Foot is that we now know that australopithecines were in South Africa early in their evolution,” lead author Darryl Granger, a geochronologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, [told Live Science](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/famed-human-ancestor-lucy-wasnt-alone-meet-little-foot/). “This implies an evolutionary connection between South Africa and East Africa prior to the age of Little Foot, and with enough time for the australopithecine species to diverge.” ## Transcript For as long as human beings have been looking up at the stars we've been wondering if there are aliens in outer space. Well it turns out we might be the aliens, here's what you need to know. [ MUSIC ] For more than a hundred years scientists have been talking about, what's known as panspermia. The idea that biological material or even living organisms could've immigrated from one planet to another, essentially seeding their new planet with life from afar. Panspermia wouldn't involve an actual alien and an actual spacecraft. Much more commonly it would be bacteria trapped within the matrix of a meteor or even simply amino acid sugars or some other hydro carbon or prebiotic material. On Earth, organisms that survive in extreme environments, known straight forwardly as extremophiles, can sometimes go dormant or even in a sense, dehydrate until conditions improve and they can essentially come out of hibernation. Also, as one study came out last year showed, sometimes space rocks can act as sort of warm incubators with water and radioactive heat essentially keeping everything inside the rock percolating. So that hydrocarbons or other prebiotic material can essentially evolve during their long journey in space. We already know that meteor strikes are common on earth, and they're certainly common on, on planets with no atmosphere. We also know, or increasingly suspect, that water, much of the water on earth may have come from comets deep in the oort cloud beyond the orbit of Pluto, and Neptune. They may have collided with earth, and essentially deposited their water in the basins that are now earthly oceans. In 1996 Mars' rock ALH84001, made a lot of news for a rock when it was announced by NASA that scientists had, had found what they believed were fossilized bacteria inside the matrix of the rock. That caused quite a sensation, but it turned out not to be as reliable as people thought. The rock still sparks a lot of controversy. Some people say that we have tossed it aside as prematurely as we accepted that it was evidence of life on Mars. But it did get the idea of panspermia going. [ SOUND ] So how does this make us aliens? Well nobody knows exactly how and when life started on earth. 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