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.
