bipedalism
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Scientists Reconstruct 12-Million-Year-Old Ape Skull
A team of paleoanthropologists has assembled the only known cranium of the extinct ape Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, revealing how the ape’s face looked. The reconstruction allows them to place Pierolapithecus on the hominid family tree and improves our understanding of how the ape moved around Spain some 12 million years ago. Pierolapithecus was first described in…
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What a Fossilised Hand Says About the Last Common Ancestor Between Humans and Chimpanzees
More than 1 million years before the early hominin known as Lucy was striding across the Afar region of Ethiopia, the lesser-known Ardipithecus ramidus roamed approximately the same area. Now, a team of anthropologists have looked at the 4.4 million-year-old fossilised hand of one specimen (affectionately dubbed “Ardi”), and argue that the human ancestors’ roaming…