The fundamental feature of human beings is that they walk upright on two legs.So how did you exercise before you walked upright on two legs? ――You may imagine that figure from an apes, but this time, it is an international study consisting of Assistant Professor Naoki Morimoto, Professor Masato Nakatsukasa, and researchers at the University of Zurich, Kyoto University. The team showed.
Apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas, which are closely related to humans, perform a characteristic quadrupedal movement called "knuckle walking" in which the back of the finger touches the ground, unlike "ordinary monkeys" that put their palms on the ground.The "knuckle walking hypothesis", which states that human ancestors shifted to bipedal walking via knuckle walking, has been predominant until now, but in order to verify this, the group developed skeletal morphology that is the key to motor function. The pattern was analyzed by X-ray CT data.As a result, it was found that the development patterns of the femurs of chimpanzees and gorillas were significantly different.This suggests that chimpanzee and gorilla knuckle gait evolved independently from the common ancestors of ordinary quadrupeds, and that human bipedalism also evolved from ordinary quadruped apes. It can be said that this is an epoch-making achievement to support.In other words, it is probable that human ancestors did not walk knuckles.
Furthermore, it was revealed that humans have a special pattern of development that is not found in other primates, that is, "delaying" rather than "advancing" development in order to achieve long legs.
Paper information:[Scientific Reports] Femoral ontogeny in humans and great apes and its implications for their last common ancestor
