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| MEDIA
ADVISORY
ATTENTION:
WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT EDITORS
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07/13/00
Contact: Diane Ainsworth
(510) 643-6259
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WHAT: |
"Footprints
from the Past," a new anthropology exhibit at the Oakland
Zoo designed by a team of anthropologists from the University
of California, Berkeley. The exhibit showcases 4 million
years of human evolution and an actual "footpath" of the
first hominids to emerge from the African savanna. |
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WHEN: |
The
exhibit begins Saturday, July 15, and is open that day from
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. After July 15, the exhibit will be open
daily throughout the year from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. |
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WHERE: |
The
Kikuyu Hut at the zoo, which is at 9777 Golf Links Road,
Oakland. |
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WHO: |
Dr.
Burton Benedict, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of anthropology
and an expert in human evolution, designed the new exhibit,
along with fellow UC Berkeley physical anthropologists Drs.
Tim D. White and Clark Howell of the Integrative Biology
Department within UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
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THE
EXHIBIT: The
exhibit features casts of early hominid skulls dating
back 3.7 million years, along with the teeth and bones
of contemporary mammals living in the African savanna
and the Veldt desert regions of the continent.
Visitors
will be able to stand in clay replicas of early hominid
footprints, such as Ramapithecus, Homo habilus and Homo
erectus, and compare their own feet to those of a close
relative, the chimpanzee, and an 11-year-old girl. Other
displays trace mankind's early bipedal evolution in Africa's
Great Rift Valley, home to the oldest known human species,
popularized by the discovery of a nearly complete skeleton
named "Lucy".
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