Trachilos footprints
]"[1] The study continues, stating that the sedimentary rocks would have been created around 5.6 million years ago, at the time of the Messinian salinity crisis (mya).
[1] In 2021, further research was published in regard to dating by Kirscher et al. Cyclostratigraphic data based on magnetic susceptibility indicated that the Trachilos footprints are about 6.05 Ma old, which is 350,000 years older than was found previously.
[1] The print morphology suggests that the trackmaker could be a basal member of the clade Hominini, but as Crete is some distance outside the known geographical range of pre-Pleistocene hominins,[1] researchers say that there is also a possibility that they represent a hitherto unknown late Miocene primate that convergently evolved human-like foot anatomy.
[1] When Gierliński and his team tried to publish the study, they received harsh criticism due to the findings going against the widely-accepted theory of early hominins evolving in Africa alone.
[1][8] Although convergent evolution is not an implausible explanation of the hominin-like trackways,[dubious – discuss], strong evidence is needed to support this interpretation.
In an interview at the CBC News, researchers claimed that while they were trying to publish their work about the footprints at high-profile publications they got "ferociously aggressive responses", criticism and rejection from reviewers and editors.
According to the researchers, “Basically, it wasn't a true peer review process at all,” “They were just trying to shut us down.”[6] After multiple rejections from other publications, the study was eventually published in the journal, "Proceedings of the Geologists' Association.
David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, Canada, argues that the footprints might not necessarily belong to a human ancestor, despite its appearance.
Similarly, Robin Crompton, a biological anthropologist at the University of Liverpool, England, believes that although the footprints belong to a bipedal organism, they might not be human ancestors but “made by a member of the great ape clade”.
They argue that the shallow marine setting could not have been travelled across by hominins or bipedal primates but "in case they did, wave action must have erased them unless the tracks were made at the high tide line during a low sea level stand at the climax of one of the glacial periods that occurred every 41 kyr in this time span".
The Late Pliocene SAB separated Crete from mainland Greece and Turkey by stretches of deep water of minimally 100 km wide according to the time–space reconstructions of the Aegean lithosphere in Van Hinsbergen and Schmid.
