Princess Kate Seen at Wimbledon in Rare Public Appearance since Cancer Reveal

The Princess of Wales arrived at the All England Club on Sunday and was greeted by a standing ovation from the Center Court crowd as she took her seat in the Royal Box - The AP
The Princess of Wales arrived at the All England Club on Sunday and was greeted by a standing ovation from the Center Court crowd as she took her seat in the Royal Box - The AP
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Princess Kate Seen at Wimbledon in Rare Public Appearance since Cancer Reveal

The Princess of Wales arrived at the All England Club on Sunday and was greeted by a standing ovation from the Center Court crowd as she took her seat in the Royal Box - The AP
The Princess of Wales arrived at the All England Club on Sunday and was greeted by a standing ovation from the Center Court crowd as she took her seat in the Royal Box - The AP

The Princess of Wales arrived at the All England Club on Sunday for the Wimbledon men's final, only her second public appearance since announcing she was diagnosed with cancer.

Kate, wife of heir to the throne Prince William, was greeted by a standing ovation from the Center Court crowd as she took her seat in the Royal Box before the start of the championship match between Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz.

She and her 9-year-old daughter, Princess Charlotte, got to the site of the grass-court Grand Slam tournament in southwest London in a motorcade about a half-hour before the final was scheduled to begin. They went to a terrace at the club that is connected to the main stadium by a pedestrian walkway and greeted several people, including 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu and other young British tennis players.

According to The AP, Kate was wearing a purple dress — one of Wimbledon's official colors.

She was joined in the front row of the Royal Box by her sister Pippa Matthews. Two rows behind them were actors Tom Cruise and Benedict Cumberbatch, while a number of former Wimbledon champions were also on hand — including Rod Laver, Andre Agassi and Stefan Edberg.

Since 2016, the princess has been the patron of the All England Club, which hosts Wimbledon each year. Her ceremonial duties include handing out the winner’s trophies after the singles finals, although she was not on hand Saturday when Barbora Krejcikova defeated Jasmine Paolini for the women's title.

Kate revealed in March that she has cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. Her lone public appearance since then was attending last month’s birthday parade for King Charles III. Before that event, she released a statement saying she was “making good progress” but still had “good days and bad days.”

Prince William has been a regular at Wimbledon finals but was not going to be there Sunday. Instead, he planned to go watch England face Spain in the final of the men’s soccer European Championship in Germany. He is the president of the English Football Association.

Queen Camilla, wife of King Charles III, visited Wimbledon on Wednesday.

 

 

 

 



Muddy Footprints Suggest 2 Species of Early Humans Were Neighbors in Kenya 1.5 Million Years Ago

An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP
An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP
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Muddy Footprints Suggest 2 Species of Early Humans Were Neighbors in Kenya 1.5 Million Years Ago

An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP
An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP

Muddy footprints left on a Kenyan lakeside suggest two of our early human ancestors were nearby neighbors some 1.5 million years ago.
The footprints were left in the mud by two different species “within a matter of hours, or at most days,” said paleontologist Louise Leakey, co-author of the research published Thursday in the journal Science.
Scientists previously knew from fossil remains that these two extinct branches of the human evolutionary tree – called Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei – lived about the same time in the Turkana Basin.
But dating fossils is not exact. “It’s plus or minus a few thousand years,” said paleontologist William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the study.
Yet with fossil footprints, “there’s an actual moment in time preserved,” he said. “It’s an amazing discovery.”
The tracks of fossil footprints were uncovered in 2021 in what is today Koobi Fora, Kenya, said Leaky, who is based at New York's Stony Brook University.
Whether the two individuals passed by the eastern side of Lake Turkana at the same time – or a day or two apart – they likely knew of each other’s existence, said study co-author Kevin Hatala, a paleoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.
“They probably saw each other, probably knew each other was there and probably influenced each other in some way,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying.
Scientists were able to distinguish between the two species because of the shape of the footprints, which holds clues to the anatomy of the foot and how it’s being used.
H. erectus appeared to be walking similar to how modern humans walk – striking the ground heel first, then rolling weight over the ball of the foot and toes and pushing off again.
The other species, which was also walking upright, was moving “in a different way from anything else we’ve seen before, anywhere else,” said co-author Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, a human evolutionary anatomist at Chatham.
Among other details, the footprints suggest more mobility in their big toe, compared to H. erectus or modern humans, said Hatala.
Our common primate ancestors probably had hands and feet adapted for grasping branches, but over time the feet of human ancestors evolved to enable walking upright, researchers say.
The new study adds to a growing body of research that implies this transformation to bipedalism – walking on two feet — didn’t happen at a single moment, in a single way.
Rather, there may have been a variety of ways that early humans learned to walk, run, stumble and slide on prehistoric muddy slopes.
“It turns out, there are different gait mechanics – different ways of being bipedal,” said Harcourt-Smith.