More Evidence For Bipedality at 4.5 MYA

Out of Case Western Reserve comes a study of some new fossil material that sheds like on early human bipedal adaptation.  From ScienceDaily:

Scott W. Simpson, PhD, led an analysis of a 4.5 million-year-old fragmentary female skeleton of the human ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus that was discovered in the Gona Project study area in the Afar Regional State of Ethiopia.

The newly analyzed fossils document a greater, but far from perfect, adaptation to bipedalism in the Ar. ramidus ankle and hallux (big toe) than previously recognized. “Our research shows that while Ardipithecus was a lousy biped, she was somewhat better than we thought before,” said Simpson.

While the weight of evidence has always a bit more than slightly favored the facultative bipedality of Ardipithecus ramidus, this research provides greater support for this hypothesis.  In my class, I stress the difference between facultative bipedality (practiced by Ardipithecus) and obligate bipedality (practiced by every other hominin).  Additionally, from the article¹:

The more complete adoption of bipedality in the australopiths resulted in the loss of functionally critical adaptations to arboreality present in Ardipithecus such as a grasping, opposable hallux, an antero-posteriorly broad pelvis with reorganization of the origin (and most likely function) of the hamstring muscles, and a more derived humero-femoral ratio. The changes in the size and structure of the dentition in the subsequent australopiths (larger molar and premolar crowns, increased enamel thickness, more robust mandibles) indicates a major behavioral and dietary shift for most hominins (perhaps excluding the species indicated by the Burtele foot) that occurred about 4.2 Ma with the earliest appearance of Australopithecus (Leakey et al., 1995, White et al., 2006).

Many of these changes, then, appear to have occurred somewhat rapidly, once the early hominins moved away from the forest and into the fringe.  Once we thought that bipedality originated in the forest/fringe.  The Ardipithecus data have killed this hypothesis. 

¹Scott W. Simpson, Naomi E. Levin, Jay Quade, Michael J. Rogers, Sileshi Semaw. Ardipithecus ramidus postcrania from the Gona Project area, Afar Regional State, Ethiopia. Journal of Human Evolution, 2019; 129: 1 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2018.12.005