Evidence of Early Up-right Walking Humans?

Evidence of Early Upright-walking Hominids
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1060208486
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04187-7

Evidence of Early Upright-walking Hominids
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1060208486
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04187-7

Thanks for this. Very interesting. That there were multiple hominin species during this early period seems unsurprising. Everywhere we look, multiple groups seem to be the rule. The difficulty is in finding them, as they are so sparse and conditions in Africa often not conducive to fossilization. So this is very interesting.
Not mentioned in the Nature article is any suggestion of a relation between these footprints and any other known hominin form. Ardipithicus might be the immediate question that arises, but it sounds like they have well analyzed the stride and some of the implications for the hip anatomy as well as the impression of the heel, and I think they would have mentioned it if there were a resemblance.
So another early bipedal hominin. I wonder whether this is another perhaps unknown type of Australopithecus, or whether we are seeing something else entirely?