You say this as if that is a bad thing? Also do you know if this is the case or not? What kinds of sources are you looking at for both the claim that this is a bad thing and that we just have single bones or teeth.
Also, how would one go about identifying Australopithecus afarensis specimen? That’s an important question as well.
Here for an example is a fairly recent paper titled: Laetoli footprints reveal bipedal gaitbiomechanics different from those ofmodern humans and chimpanzees. Some key highlights:
- The only hominin taxon recognized from fossils that lived around the same time as the Laetoli footprints were made is Australopithecus afarensis
- The post-cranial anatomy of AA is well known thanks to fossil discoveries at Hadar, Ethiopia
- It is challenging to determine via skeletal morphology habitual locomotor patterns, especially with rare or fragmentary fossils and those that lack modern functional analogues
- The Laetoli hominin is morphologically distinct from both chimpanzees and habitually barefoot modern humans
Why does this matter? You can reconstruct specimen without articulation.
But if that’s true that means we have even greater confidence in the authenticity of the rest of her skeleton! I hope that you are not insinuating we can dismiss evidence now, just claiming foreign bones are likely mixed up in all these hominin fossils. A little writeup on this can be seen here: