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Human ancestors first walked in trees mongabay.com May 31, 2007 Walking on two legs is likely to have first arisen among apes living in trees, rather than ground-dwelling prehistoric ancestors of humans, reports research published in the June 1st issue of the journal Science.
However new research complicates this explanation. Observing wild orangutans in Sumatra, Indonesia, a team of researchers led by Susannah Thorpe of the University of Birmingham in Birmingham found evidence of "hand-assisted bipedalism" as they move about the trees of the rainforest canopy. "Our conclusion is that arboreal bipedalism had very strong adaptive benefits. So, we don't need to explain how our ancestors could have gone from being quadrupedal to being bipedal," said Susannah Thorpe, lead author of the paper. To explain the evolution of bipedalism in our ancestors, Thorpe and colleagues propose a scenario that begins as other researchers have envisioned. AAAS explains:
"The Science authors suggest that early human ancestors responded to this by abandoning the high canopy for the forest floor, where they remained bipedal and began eating food from the ground or smaller trees. The ancestors of chimps and gorillas, on the other hand, became more specialized for vertical climbing between the high canopy and the ground and thus developed knuckle-walking for crossing from one tree to another on the ground." Thorpe et al (2007) "Origin of Human Bipedalism as an Adaptation for Locomotion on Flexible Branches". Science 1 June 2007. Comments? News options
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