Trabecular evidence for a human-like gait in Australopithecus africanus.
Although the earliest known hominins were apparently upright bipeds, there has been mixed evidence whether particular species of hominins including those in the genus Australopithecus walked with relatively extended hips, knees and ankles like modern humans, or with more flexed lower limb joints like apes when bipedal. Here we demonstrate in chimpanzees and humans a highly predictable and sensitive relationship between the orientation of the ankle joint during loading and the principal orientation of trabecular bone struts in the distal tibia that function to withstand compressive forces within the joint. Analyses of the orientation of these struts using microCT scans in a sample of fossil tibiae from the site of Sterkfontein, of which two are assigned to Australopithecus africanus, indicate that these hominins primarily loaded their ankles in a relatively extended posture like modern humans and unlike chimpanzees. In other respects, however, trabecular properties in Au africanus are distinctive, with values that mostly fall between those of chimpanzees and humans. These results indicate that Au. africanus, like Homo, walked with an efficient, extended lower limb.
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany ; Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Meir M
MM
Barak
Daniel E
DE
Lieberman
David
D
Raichlen
Herman
H
Pontzer
Anna G
AG
Warrener
Jean-Jacques
JJ
Hublin
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D000843:Ankle Joint / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D005260:Female; D005580:Fossils; D005684:Gait; D015186:Hominidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D013977:Tibia / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D055114:X-Ray Microtomography; D055815:Young Adult