What if we descend from “brothers” of African monkeys? Old theory comes to life with new study.
A century later, researchers revisited Ardipithecus ramidus — or just “Ardi” — the ancestor of 4.4 million years that could bridge the gap between great apes and humans.
It lived long before Lucy, and probably moved differently than apes.
To understand this, the authors of a new published in Nature this month took a close look at the osso do ankle (the “talus”) of Ardipithecus ramidus, as well as the talus and calcaneus of other apes, monkeys and early humans, and compared them.
A key angle — the “talar angle”, basically the tilt of the ankle joint — it was 14.5°, the highest of any fossil hominin studied.
“One of the surprises in this discovery was that Ardi walked upright but still retained many ape-like features, including a grasping foot,” Thomas Cody Prang, assistant professor of biological anthropology, explained to .
Ardi’s ankle didn’t evolve randomly — it adapted to both climbing and running. incipient form of upright walking, setting the stage for later hominids.
Prang and his co-authors concluded that Ardi’s anatomy supports “similar to that of African great apes.” — a mix of vertical climbing and walking with your heels touching the ground.
“Based on our analysis, we conclude that living African great apes – such as chimpanzees and gorillas – are more like dead ends of evolution rather than stages of human emergence,” said Thomas Prang.
In short, a centuries-old theory with increasing certainty: the first hominids probably moved through trees like apes and also took the first steps towards bipedal locomotion.
