New Insights on the Emergence of Human Upright Walking

Bio:

Thomas Cody Prang is a biological anthropologist with research interests in human evolution, functional morphology, and locomotion. His research aims to understand how locomotor behavior has evolved in primates with special emphasis on early humans and apes. He has participated in fieldwork at Laetoli, Tanzania, which is a site best known for the preservation of 3.7 million-year-old fossilized footprints attributed to Australopithecus afarensis, and has studied human fossils at museums in Ethiopia and South Africa. His work on early hominin functional morphology and evolution has been published in journals such as Science Advances, eLife, Journal of Human Evolution, and more. He completed his Ph.D. in biological anthropology in 2019 at New York University after which he spent one year at the University at Albany as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University.

Abstract:

The morphology and positional behavior of the last common ancestor (LCA) of humans and chimpanzees are critical for understanding the evolution of human upright walking. Early 20th century anatomical research supported the view that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors, but recent work based on early human fossils has challenged this view. The 4.4 million-year-old fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus provide unprecedented insight on the paleobiology of the earliest hominins and the LCA. The study of the earliest human fossils acts as a test of implicit predictions made by comparative anatomists over a century ago. In this talk, I use extensive comparative morphometric data, analyzed in an evolutionary framework, to demonstrate that the Ar. ramidus fossils retain anatomies that provide evidence for a semi-terrestrial, African ape-like precursor to early human bipedalism. Additionally, I interpret these results in light of new fossils that contribute to a cohesive explanation for patterns of human and ape evolution spanning approximately 20 million years. Overall, these analyses reinvigorate debates about the role of African ape morphology and locomotor behavior in the ancestry of humans, and raise questions about the patterns and processes of African ape evolution.