Robotics show Lucy walked upright

[tocqueville]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4697977.stm

Australopithecus afarensis, the early human who lived about 3.2 million years ago, walked upright, according to an "evolutionary robotics" model.
The model, which uses an individual's footprints to predict its gait, suggests "Lucy", as she is better known , walked rather like modern humans.

This contradicts earlier suggestions that Lucy shuffled like a bipedally walking chimpanzee.

The research is published in the Royal Society Interface journal.

"I think it is very interesting work," Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, told the BBC News website. "There was controversy as to whether these prints where showing a human pattern. And it looks like they do."

[formerrepuke]

1. Apparently, chimps only walk bipedally when they are carrying something

or they are walking on very wet ground... Or, in Lucy's case- there may have been extensive tall grassland: making it advantageous to walk upright in order to detect predators. Evolutionary biology is fascinating.