Human Gait Developed Well Before ‘Lucy’
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
A chimp-sized human ancestor walked upright 6 million years ago, far earlier than other known species with a human-like gait, researchers reported Thursday.
CT scans of the top of a fossil thighbone show that the creature walked upright. The researchers’ findings, published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, take the dawn of human gait back another 3 million years from “Lucy,†who had been the earliest known prehuman to have walked on two legs. The older species, Orrorin tugenensis, lived in what is now the Kenyan Lukeino Formation.
