Sentences with phrase «a. afarensis»

FEET LIKE APE, A. afarensis... The recent description of four articulating foot bones from 3 - 3.5 Myr deposits in the South African cave site of Sterkfontein support this.

I am nowadays more convinced than I formerly was by the arguments of the «obligate terrestrial school»; for example Latimer (1991) lists quite a number of features of the lower limb that resemble the human condition and no other, such as that the hallux (big toe) of A. afarensis is not abductable as would be required for grasping.

Several more bones from this species have been found in Ethiopia, including the famed «Lucy,» a nearly complete A. afarensis skeleton found in Hadar.

(Even if it were true, it would not demonstrate (b), for reasons given in Lippard (1989 - 90)-- the knee joint is not the only evidence of bipedality in A. afarensis.)

Whether H. floresiensis is correctly attributed to the genus Homo; if actually a member of an earlier member of the hominin lineage, such as H. erectus; could Hobbit belong to A. afarensis and if so how did Honnit's ancestors get to Indonesia; these are all questions difficult to answer on the evidence currently available.

A dozen new footprints from the S1 (N = 11) and S2 (N = 1) trails are sufficiently complete to estimate the body sizes of their makers (again, presumably A. afarensis) as well as approximate walking speeds.

Regardless, these footprints do expand the upper limit of size in (presumably) A. afarensis, and offer strong support for arguments favoring strong sexual size dimorphism in this extinct species.

Previous studies on A. afarensis, including the famed Lucy, the most complete example of the species ever found, concluded that the male - to - female size ratio was about 15 percent — on a par with that of humans.

Most agree that Lucy's foot and mode of walking were already quite modern, thanks to a few 3.2 - million - year - old foot bones from A. afarensis adults, a 3.3 - million - year - old infant, and 3.7 - million - year - old footprints in Tanzania, thought to be made by the same species.

Whatever its name, others agree that the foot is unexpectedly primitive for 3.4 million years ago: «I would have expected such a foot from a much older hominin, not one that overlapped with A. afarensis, which has a much more derived foot than this thing,» says paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva of Boston University, who is not a member of Haile - Selassie's team.

Paleoanthropologists have found the bones and teeth of hundreds of individuals of A. afarensis from between 3 million and 4 million years ago.

They also have scanned hand bones of other members of Australopithecus, including Lucy's species, A. afarensis, but the pattern of use was not preserved in that species's trabeculae.

Researchers have long wondered if other upright walking species shared the Rift Valley of Africa with Lucy, particularly after they discovered that several types of hominins were alive at the same time after A. afarensis disappeared 3 million years ago.

It also suggests that it was indeed A. afarensis that walked in the mud at Laetoli.

Although he agrees that A. afarensis had some arching, it may have lacked the most important arching on the inside of the foot.

The bone also shows that A. afarensis had abandoned the flexible midfoot that apes use to grasp tree branches, in favor of an arch that makes upright walking more efficient.

But paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva of Boston University says that the new foot bone, along with a «laundry list of other features of the lower limb» make it more likely that A. afarensis was a «terrestrial biped with little time spent in the trees.»

A. afarensis and A. africanus displayed pelvic arrangements for upright walking, but not for Ardi's apelike climbing power.

It might also settle an ongoing dispute about how to interpret a wide variation seen in A. afarensis bones, with some saying the differences are too great for it to have been just one species.

The ancient toddler shows key anatomical features of A. afarensis, including a shoulder blade midway in shape between that of a human and a gorilla, along with features rarely seen, like a full set of both baby and adult teeth.

Most experts agree that our genus evolved from a species of Australopithecus — either A. afarensis (Lucy's species) or A. africanus.

After studying casts of the Laetoli prints for decades, scientists decided that A. afarensis, though a primitive hominin, walked with a surprisingly modern gait that was not like an ape's.

Pickford and Senut believe that Orrorin had already evolved more humanlike femurs and teeth than A. afarensis, a species that includes the famous skeleton Lucy.

Now Selam is further illuminating whether A. afarensis spent all its time on the ground or, like an ape, still lived a partially arboreal life, as Wong describes, starting on page 78.

Using super high - resolution CT scans, Kappelman originally planned to learn more about Lucy's movement and lifestyle — researchers have long debated how much time, if any, A. afarensis spent in trees.

Furthermore, these ancient butchers were not members of our own genus, Homo, but the more primitive Australopithecus, specifically A. afarensis, the species to which the celebrated Lucy fossil belongs.

Fossils from A. afarensis date to between 3.7 and 3 million years ago, so the two species would have overlapped (though Lucy herself may have lived too recently to see one).

Upper - body evidence notwithstanding, he says, the anatomy of A. afarensis shows that its ability to climb trees was compromised.

This involved casting a number of foot bones known for A. afarensis, including a partial foot skeleton, in a shrinkable material, and shrinking them to Lucy's size.

Not exact matches

A. africanus is closely related to Lucy and her kin (Australopithecus afarensis), the gracile hominids found in the East African Rift Valley at Hadar, at Laetoli in Tanzania and elsewhere.