Sentences with phrase «afarensis bones»
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.
https://www.newscientist.com/ Not exact matches
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.
Now, a 3.2 - million - year - old foot bone from a member of Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, reveals that this hominin was no flat foot: It had already evolved arches and a stiff midfoot similar to living humans.
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.»
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.
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.
Paleoanthropologists have found the bones and teeth of hundreds of individuals of A. afarensis from between 3 million and 4 million years ago.
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.
Several more bones from this species have been found in Ethiopia, including the famed «Lucy,» a nearly complete A. afarensis skeleton found in Hadar.
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.
Perhaps as early as 3.4 million years ago, the modern human ancestor Australopithecus afarensis was using stone tools to strip meat from the bones of large mammals.