How did it develop? Were we knuckle-walkers who stood up, or suspensory apes who came down? Were we waders or root-pullers? Was it open woodlands or the savanna?
Human Bipedalism
Matthew Edwards
Evan Young
Our closest relative os the chimpanzee, so we came from knuckle walkers. Eventually, mutations arose that shaped our physiology to stand taller, which allowed them to survive better and reproduce. Things continued to go that way until we became fully bipedal
Benjamin Green
As for the environment, I'm not totally sure, but humans evolved in Africa, which contained/contains many biomes. But most likely forest, based off the natural habitat of chimpanzees and other related apes
Robert Richardson
What about Ardi? She doesn't seem to have the long metatarsals that chimps or bonobos do, and seems to have a more bipedally-oriented pelvis.
Jeremiah Watson
I'm not familiar with what Ardi is, so maybe I'm missing something but: what about Ardi? It seems like you just described an intermediate evolutionary form, proving what I described
Austin James
I'm saying that its arms and hands are ill-suited for knuckle-walking locomotion, and its pelvis seems more weight-bearing for a biped as opposed to a quadruped. In other words, the LCA seems less chimp-like and more humanoid (to an extent).
Lucas Watson
This guy is right. The great apes/their ancestors came first, and they're all knuckle-walkers. We evolved to be bipedal. Some theories as for why are to better hold tools or to cross rivers easier. I personally don't find either of those explanations satisfactory, but we did evolve somehow.
As for this, I don't know what you're asking. If its less chimp-like and more humanoid, its an intermediate stage. I don't see the problem.
Caleb Wilson
>great apes and their ancestors knuckle-walked
What is the orangutan? Also, there is little to no evidence that Miocene apes have ever knuckle-walked. In fact, some suggest that knuckle-walking developed independently in chimps and gorillas, meaning the LCA most likely didn't walk like either of them.
Nathaniel Lee
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Austin Gomez
The tree dwellers that humans came from were also bipeds.
Landon Murphy
lol if evolution is real why dont apes give birth to humans now
Leo Peterson
If humans gave birth to the internet, then what are you?
Kevin Adams
i am internets
Cooper Morris
That is a very bold claim that requires some serious evidence
Easton Murphy
They do. Human apes give birth to human children
Owen Martin
It's a gradual process.
Cats for example can do that for a while, if natural selection favored those who can do it better it would start a process that eventually would lead to bipedal cats.
Andrew Garcia
Seems resaonable when you take Pierolapithecus and Ardipithecus into account, not to mention Orrorin and Sahelanthropus.
Kayden Ortiz
Parker Parker
Do we know if the tendency to stand like that is a trait that could be selectively bred for? I wonder how many generations until naturally bipedal walking cats.
Logan Evans
Wow, I did not read your post at all.
Josiah Watson
>Were we knuckle-walkers
What do you mean by "we", Subhuman?
Kevin Young
Any phenotypically expressed trait can be selectively bred for. But it takes hundreds of generations in most cases, because most mutations only cause slight changes in an organism. In theory, if a chimp suddenly got a shit ton of mutations that shifted it's foramen magnum and restructured it's hip, that process would take a lot less time. But it's unlikely that that would happen. So evolution really comes down to generation time, rate of mutation, and severity of mutations.
Ryder Lopez
Bump with Orrorin.
Adam Brown
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Isaac Price
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Wyatt Hall
Ardipithecus was fully bipedal and she lived in the woods, not a savannah where she needed to "see over grass".
Why we are bipedal is anyone's guess.
Thomas Garcia
Most likely a trait carried over from Pierolapithecus and its descendants. I think they address it as a "orthograde aboreal bipedality."
Michael Anderson
*biped
Zachary Hill
Of course we can't be totally sure, but world class experts in evolutionary biology think it was to see over grass and free the hands for carrying tools. You think you know more than them?
Blake Jenkins
You realize it's an even split when it comes to that idea, right. Half think it's the savanna hypothesis, and the other half think we were always bipedal, just in a different way.
m.phys.org