Word: upright
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...much of the skull, were missing, the scientists could tell that the animal stood 3 ft. 6 in. tall. That seemed too short for a hominid, but the animal had an all important human characteristic: unlike any species of primate known to have come before, this creature walked fully upright. How did the researchers know? The knee joint was built in such a way that the animal could fully straighten its legs. That would have freed it from the inefficient, bowlegged stride that keeps today's chimps and gorillas from extended periods of two-legged walking. Presuming that this diminutive...
...like a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, into a fairly complete A. afarensis skull. It turned out to be much more apelike than human, with a forward-thrust jaw and chimp-size braincase. These short creatures (males were under five feet tall) were probably no smarter than the average ape. Their upright stance and bipedal locomotion, however, may have given them an advantage by freeing their hands, making them more efficient food gatherers...
...theory at least. What matters under the laws of natural selection is that Lucy and her cousins thrived and passed their genes on to the next evolutionary generation. Between 3 million and 2 million years B.P., a healthy handful of descendants sprang from the A. afarensis line, upright primates that were similar to Lucy in overall body design but different in the details of bone structure. Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus, Paranthropus boisei -- all flourished in Africa. But in the evolutionary elimination tournament, the two Paranthropus species eventually lost out. Only A. africanus, most scientists believe, survived to give rise...
Apparently burdened by preconceptions and the prevailing bias against the notion of Neanderthal ancestors, Boule concluded that a Neanderthal had prehensile feet, could not fully extend his legs, and thrust his head awkwardly forward because his spine prevented him from standing upright. In his scientific papers, Boule described the "brutish appearance of this muscular and clumsy body." This almost simian image persisted largely unchallenged for decades. Indeed, vestiges of it remain today in such manifestations as textbook illustrations, the Alley Oop cartoon strip, and in the pejorative use of "Neanderthal...
...image was wrong. In 1957 American and British researchers re- examined the skeleton that Boule had studied and concluded that Neanderthals stood upright; the stooped posture of Boule's specimen was attributable to arthritis. Also the feet were not prehensile, nor was the | spine curved. They further noted that the Neanderthal's brain was as large as that of early modern humans, a fact that Boule ignored in his publications...