Understanding the genetic basis of the physical and behavioural traits that distinguish
humans from other primates presents one of the great new challenges in biology. Of the …

Based on our knowledge of locomotor biomechanics and ecology we predict the locomotion
and posture of the last common ancestors of (a) great and lesser apes and their close fossil …

Abstract The Plio-Pleistocene site of Dmanisi, Georgia, has yielded a rich fossil and
archaeological record documenting an early presence of the genus Homo outside Africa …

Hominin footprints offer evidence about gait and foot shape, but their scarcity, combined with
an inadequate hominin fossil record, hampers research on the evolution of the human gait …

The long legs and short arms of humans are distinctive for a primate, the result of selection
acting in opposite directions on each limb at different points in our evolutionary history. This …

Humans are unique, compared with our closest living relatives (chimpanzees) and early
fossil hominins, in having an enlarged body size and lower limb joint surfaces in …

Bipedalism is a key human adaptation and a defining feature of the hominin clade. Fossil
femora discovered in Kenya and attributed to Orrorin tugenensis, at 6 million years ago …

There is considerable debate over the level of size dimorphism and inferred social behavior
of Australopithecus afarensis. Most previous studies have analyzed size variation in single …

The goal of this review is to discuss the mechanisms of postural degeneration, particularly
the loss of lumbar lordosis commonly observed in the elderly in the context of evolution …

The consequences of the relatively short lower limbs characteristic of AL 288-1 have been
widely discussed, as have the causes and consequences of the short limbs of Neanderthals …