Sentences with word «bipedalism»

These finds include such famous East African fossils as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), which strengthened the importance of bipedalism in human evolution and proved an essential milestone on our way to modern Homo sapiens.

Considerable debate continues over when and in what context a modern human — like form of bipedalism evolved, because of a fragmentary record and disagreements over the functional interpretations of existing fossils and footprints.

Researchers had previously taken bipedalism as distinctive of humans and their closest extinct relatives, together called hominins, speculating that early hominins adapted to two legs on African savannas some five million years ago, after descending from the trees and outgrowing a phase of knuckle walking similar to that of modern chimps and gorillas.

The researchers «present a plausible and elegant argument in favor of the emergence of bipedalism in an arboreal rather than terrestrial context,» according to an accompanying commentary by researchers Paul O'Higgins and Sarah Elton, both of the Hull York Medical School in England.

Both animals have been used to understand the evolution of human bipedalism.

A close examination of 3.6 million year old hominin footprints discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania suggests our ancestors evolved the hallmark trait of extended leg, human - like bipedalism substantially earlier than previously thought.

Now I would like you to explain this: «Of course the other larger animals were no match for stick - wielding gangster bipedalism and the proto - dinasaurs took over but they did not evolve very much for many millions of years.

Its spine was S - shaped and its neck vertically oriented, two other adaptations stemming from bipedalism.

That increased awareness was necessary, a reaction to the need to find food in a changing landscape, and a trade - off for the increased physical vulnerability that came with bipedalism in an era when roaming hominids had their share of natural predators.

«Striding bipedalism is obviously a dandy adaptation, but there is no shortage of colorful and plausible speculations as to why it occurred, from thermoregulation to sexual displays, from looking over tall grasses to wading through the water.»

Losing a genetic switch that increases production of a protein called GDF6 may have created the big toe and helped shape the human foot for bipedalism, scientists propose in a paper published online January 7 in Cell.

They say the discovery strengthens the case that differences in foot structure and limb proportion in early hominins reflect different paths from orangutanlike bipedalism.

They are considered the earliest example of bipedalism among hominins.

Earlier models supporting the connection between bipedalism and heat loss examined ancient humans standing still in the sun, which the new paper's authors argue is less realistic.

Because the H. naledi fossils have not yet been dated, researchers don't know how this form of bipedalism fits into our family tree.

«It's hard to envisage an animal that had entirely made the leap to full, obligate bipedalism,» he says.

Some studies have linked similarities in ancient lizard bone structure to bipedal locomotion, but it is unclear exactly when lizards developed bipedalism.

«This foot, therefore, provides some of the best evidence that there were different experiments in bipedalism going on during this time in human evolution,» says DeSilva.

The individuals who could make full use of their forelimbs would have had a distinct advantage over those whose hands were not free to wield a club or a spear, and within a few generations the trend toward bipedalism could have been well established.

Second, the area where the skull was found was once forest, not the primordial wide - open savanna where hominids and their hallmark bipedalism were thought to have evolved.

Traits such as habitual bipedalism, big brains and language didn't all appear at once — instead, their emergence is spread over millions of years.

These observations support studies of the postcranial fossil record which have concluded that H. erectus was an obligatory biped, whereas A. africanus showed a locomotor repertoire comprising facultative bipedalism as well as arboreal climbing.

Princess Abby suffered from an interesting condition called bipedalism which meant her hind legs were significantly longer than her forelimbs.

If either is indeed a hominid, that could overturn a long - held theory that bipedalism evolved when forest - dwelling apes moved out into open savannas, possibly as a result of climate change.

Or size and reorganization might have been late secondary consequences of something like bipedalism's rearrangements of body and brain.

Prosin says that as far as she knows both chimps still reside in a lab at Stony Brook, where they are the subjects of experiments to understand the evolution of human bipedalism.

For the origins of bipedalism, for example, Owen Lovejoy is centre - stage, though many of the objections raised to his theory are given an airing.

Bipedalism is fundamental to what made humans human.

In our human - ruled world, bipedalism is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it, much less marvel at it.

Other research during this dinosaur renaissance, looking at the inflexibility of its hand and wrist, revealed that Iguanodon spent most of its time with four limbs on the ground, but was capable of some bipedalism.

Bipedalism, one of the basic markers of humans, apparently developed long before other traits, such as stone - tool making.

For decades anthropologists have argued the «savanna hypothesis»: that bipedalism evolved on the savannas of Africa as spreading grasslands forced our ancestors to walk increasing distances across open territory.

A. ramidus apparently climbed trees but also walked upright some 4.4 million years ago — more than half a million years before the long - accepted origin of bipedalism.

In that case, bipedalism must have emerged for different reasons.

The fossil record shows that bipedalism is very ancient, predating tool - making and the evolution of large brains that were once seen as the most fundamental biological adaptations of humankind.

Some scientists contend the scans were at too low a resolution to push back the first appearance of bipedalism 2 million years.

Until now the oldest evidence of bipedalism was the fossil footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania, which are believed to have been left 3.6 million years ago by A. afarensis.

A handful of fossil species dating from five million to 28 million years old, mostly before chimpanzees split from hominins, showed signs of upright posture and bipedalism, but «the evidence has been pretty flakey,» Wood says.

Bipedalism, in other words, evolved earlier than believed.

Thorpe and company propose that bipedalism evolved to help such animals reach tasty fruit just out of reach, and as forest cover shrank, chimps took to shimmying and knuckle walking while hominins began stretching their legs on the ground.

Paleoanthropologist Susannah Thorpe of the University of Birmingham, England, spotted apes clambering on trees a total of 2,811 times, including numerous instances of bipedalism.

Bipedalism is a quintessentially human trait that distinguishes us from other primates.

A new species of Australopithecus, the ancestor of Homo, pushes back the origins of bipedalism to some four million years ago

«This species has a unique combination of traits below the neck, and that adds another type of bipedalism to our record of human evolution,» Harcourt - Smith said.

Once the human and chimp genomes were deciphered about a decade ago, they realized they could now begin to pinpoint the molecular underpinnings of our big brain, bipedalism, varied diet, and other traits that have made our species so successful.

«Once you have bipedalism, you have to make other accommodations,» she says.

He has studied the evolution of bipedalism and edited From Biped to Strider (Springer, 2004), a well - respected textbook.

Some of the these essentially human features include hairlessness, bipedalism, subcutaneous fat, voluntary control of breathing, and a descended larynx, which makes speech possible.