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KOMPAS.com – Researchers in their new study found that before walking on two legs, human ancestors move by swinging from tree branch to branch.
Human ancestors also walk using fingers like chimps.
The findings, which have been published in Science Advances, also challenge earlier thinking that the earliest hominins did not perform either behavior.
Also read: Our ancestors lived side by side with dinosaurs, this is the proof
Quoting New Scientist, Monday (15/3/2021) the conclusion about how our ancestors walked was obtained from fossil analysis Ardipithecus ramidus who are 4.4 million years old.
The fossil, dubbed Ardi, is considered to be one of the earliest known hominins.
In the study, Thomas Cody Prang of Texas A&M University and colleagues took Ardi’s reported hand measurements in 2009 and compared them to 416 hand measurements in 53 species. primates which are still alive, including chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans.
“Analysis shows that Ardi’s hands are chimpanzee-like, implying that humans and chimps evolved from a chimpanzee-like ancestor,” Prang said.
Researchers also found that the finger and palm bones were similar in size to that of apes. The dimensions of the joints and knuckles are also relatively large.
So the researchers think the shape is an adaptation that may have helped hominins to cling to branches and even walk with their knuckles.
“Ardi also has an elongated and curved finger bone which is similar in animals that usually hang from branches,” said Prang.
Furthermore, the researchers said that large primates tend to hang from branches and climb trees, while smaller animals such as monkeys are able to walk along the branches.
“The studies quite convincingly show that Ardi’s hand has some suspensory adaptations which I think makes more sense given his size,” said Tracy Kivell. University of Kent, English.
The researchers also confirmed this using evolutionary modeling. This involves comparing the features of different primates, both living and extinct, in order to understand the evolutionary relationship between physical features and movement.
“In short, this approach models the evolution of traits across the tree of life, which in this case includes all the species in our analysis,” added Prang.
Understanding the hand morphology of our earliest human relatives brings us one step closer to explaining why humans are so different from our close relatives.
As one of them is to show, that the last common ancestor of chimps and humans was relatively similar to chimps before the big evolutionary change towards bipedalism (walking on two legs) and hand dexterity occurred.
Even so, Prang’s views are still opposed by some quarters.
Like Sergio Almécija at the New York Museum of American Natural History, who says that more research is needed on more Miocene fossils of apes in the Miocene era to test fundamental aspects of our recent ancestors with apes.
Also read: Before there was a fire, our human ancestors cooked with hot springs
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