Lucy’s kind had mysterious neighbors.

The article reports on a study published in "Nature" which suggests that the shape and positioning of hominid footprints unearthed at Tanzania's Laetoli site and have been attributed to Lucy's species Australopithecus afarensis differ enough from A. afarensis to qualify as marks of a separate Australopithecus species. Topics include paleoanthropologist Ellison McNutt's claim about the print sizes and the research team's description of the Laetoli individual's foot shapes and left leg.