Abstract
Australopithecine foot bones from Hadar (Ethiopia) as well as ten fossil footprints from Laetoli (Tanzania) exhibit arboreal anatomical characteristics. About 3 Mya there were two genera in South Africa: a more human-like genus with bipedal locomotion and one Australopithecus genus with a more ape-like morphology of mixed features, i.e. bipedal for the talus and the distal epiphysis of the tibia, and arboreal for the other foot bones. The human hand is a primitive unspecialized organ whose axis lies on the third ray, suggesting that the hand was never used for specialized locomotion. A common ancestor of humans and apes and australopithecines is proposed. This ancestor was neither arboreal nor quadrudepal, but bipedal. Primitive bipedalism was a characteristic feature of “Protohominoidea.”
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Deloison, Y. (2004). A New Hypothesis on the Origin of Hominoid Locomotion. In: Meldrum, D.J., Hilton, C.E. (eds) From Biped to Strider. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8965-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8965-9_3
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