The team wrote that it would need to examine more fossils before it could say whether the entire species walked the same way.īerger said that if modern humans were to observe an A. sediba was built to walk in this manner, said Jeremy DeSilva, a functional morphologist at Boston University and lead author of that part of the analysis. But the leg anatomy of this female suggests that A. This type of motion is called hyperpronation, and in modern humans it’s considered a problem that needs correction. But she probably did so with a peculiar gait marked by an inward rotation of the knee and hip, causing her narrow-heeled feet to twist slightly. One of the papers focused entirely on the female’s lower limbs and reconstructed the mechanics of her motion.īy examining bone grooves and muscle attachments in the kneecap, thigh and lower leg bones and comparing them with those in humans and apes, the scientists were able to figure out that the roughly 4-foot-tall creature walked upright. The ape-like boy and older woman who tumbled through a sinkhole and lay buried in a deep underground cave for nearly 2 million years have also given scientists a better view of how our early relatives walked. For example, though it was long believed that Australopiths had six lower vertebrae - one more than humans and at least two more than apes - it is now clear that they had the same number as humans: five. sediba‘s anatomy make it an unlikely candidate for being our forebear.Īt a minimum, the new details revealed in the papers are causing scientists to revise, or at least question, some long-held assumptions about the anatomical makeup of our extended evolutionary family. Others say the similarities can be chalked up to the diversity of early hominids, but that certain aspects of A. Critics say the skeletons are not old enough to be the precursors to Homo. Berger was senior author of all the new studies.īut not everyone accepts this view. Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who discovered the fossils in 2008. The skeleton fossils have so many human-like features “across the whole of the body that it must be considered, at the very least, a possible ancestor,” said Lee R.
#Lucy the missing link series
In a series of six papers published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, the researchers argue that the “mosaic nature” of the Australopithecus sediba specimens makes them a strong candidate to be the “missing link” - the branch of Australopithecus that ultimately gave rise to the genus Homo, which includes Homo sapiens.
But they also had long lower limbs, flat feet and a flexible lumbar spine that gave them a distinct evolutionary edge: They could cover long distances by walking upright on two legs.Īfter four years of intense analysis, a team of paleoanthropologists is making its most detailed case yet that a pair of ancient skeletons discovered in a grassy South African valley could represent the direct evolutionary link between modern humans and the family of human ancestors that includes the Australopithecus known as Lucy. With long arms, high shoulder blades and powerful fingers, the ancient creatures were built for climbing trees.