Dilemma of the obstetrical dilemma
During the past few years, anthropologists have been questioning the long-held idea that human birth is uniquely risky for mothers and infants because of the...
All posts tagged with bipedalism
The foramen magnum does not point to locomotor adaptation
Aidan Ruth and colleagues in the Journal of Human Evolution have an interesting paper with the seemingly counter-intuitive result that foramen magnum orienta...
Notable: Ancient rock art from Sulawesi
Notable paper: Aubert M, Brumm A, Ramli M, Sutikna T, Saptomo EW, Hakim B, Morwood MJ, van den Burgh GD, Kinsley L, Dosseto A. (2014). Pleistocene cave art f...
Donatello, the ancient Egyptians, and homolateral pose
A clever article by Rose Eveleth for The Atlantic looks into a peculiar regularity in the history of art: “Nobody Knows What Running Looks Like”. Eveleth rev...
Glut suit riot
On topic: A Primate of Modern Aspect reviews the anatomy of the Ardipithecus proximal femur.
Mailbag: Ardipithecus, the documentary
Regarding the “Discovering Ardi” program:
Discovering Ardi notes
I haven’t been able to see all of the “Discovering Ardi” show tonight, but we did get most of the second hour. I just thought I’d jot down some general comme...
Anthropologists win Ig Nobel Prize for Physics
New Scientist reports on the “Best of Ig Nobel Prizes 2009”. We discover that Harvard anthropologist Dan Lieberman and his colleagues have made a splash:
Ardipithecus FAQ
Today is Ardipithecus day. Eleven papers in tomorrow’s issue of Science describe the research on one exceptional skeleton (numbered ARA-VP-6/500, nicknamed “...
Ankles of the australopithecines
Recent University of Michigan Ph.D. Jeremy DeSilva gets some nice press about his work demonstrating that fossil hominins didn’t climb like chimpanzees:
Galili femoral anatomy
Elizabeth Culotta reports from the Vertebrate Paleontology meetings about an analysis of the hominid femur from Galili, Ethiopia.
The Orrorin identity
There's nothing especially surprising about the functional interpretations in Richmond and Jungers' paper about the Orrorin BAR 1002'00 femur. They conclude...
Them's fightin' legs
Elizabeth Pennisi has a short piece in Science describing David Carrier's ideas about leg length and fighting in early hominids.
Orrorin opera
There's a new paper by Tim White in the "In Press" portion of Comptes Rendus Palevol, titled "Early hominid femora: The inside story". It has a short introd...
When chimpanzees stand
The current (February 2006) issue of AJPA carries an article by Craig Stanford describing the context of bipedal posture for chimpanzees in the Bwindi Impen...
The robotic Lucy model
The BBC is running this article about a new study that evaluates the bipedality of A. afarensis using robotic design software:
The knuckle-walking anteater
Caley Orr (Personal page, Arizona State University) has an advance paper in AJPA examining convergent features in the wrists of knuckle-walking hominoids an...
Lowly origin of bipedalism :: the squatting model
In his 2003 book, Lowly Origin, Jonathan Kingdon presents a model for the origins of hominid bipedality, along with many other possible insights concerning ...
The Hominid Pelvis
The most dramatic illustration of bipedalism is the pelvis, and the most dramatic specimen demonstrating pelvic morphology is the relatively complete skelet...
Why be bipedal?
The skeletal adaptation to bipedalism is well documented in early hominids. What is less clear is what events led to this adaptation and its eventual succes...