The First Family

Fragments of 13 Individual people who may have perished together. They were discovered by Donald Johanson in 1975 in Hadar, Ethiopia. They are around 3.2 million years old.

  Toe bones found among the First Family are long compared to those of humans, but they don't curve forward towards the heel as they do in modern tree-climbing primates.

The heels of the First Family could withstand the pressure of walking upright, as, like human heels, they are filled with shock-absorbing 'spongy' bone, rather than the more solid bone found in the heels of apes.