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Implications of early hominid labyrinthine morphology for evolution of human bipedal locomotion

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Abstract

THE upright posture and obligatory bipedalism of modern humans are unique among living primates. The evolutionary history of this behaviour has traditionally been pursued by functional analysis of the postcranial skeleton and the preserved footprint trails of fossil hominids. Here we report a systematic attempt to reconstruct the locomotor behaviour of early hominids by looking at a major component of the mechanism for the unconscious perception of movement, namely by examining the vestibular system of living primates and early hominids. High-resolution computed tomography was used to generate cross-sectional images of the bony labyrinth. Among the fossil hominids the earliest species to demonstrate the modern human morphology is Homo erectus. In contrast, the semicircular canal dimensions in crania from southern Africa attributed to Australopithecus and Paranthropus resemble those of the extant great apes. Among early Homo specimens, the canal dimensions of Stw 53 are unlike those seen in any of the hominids or great apes, whereas those of SK 847 are modern-human-like

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Author notes

  1. Fred Spoor

    Present address: Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, Rockefeller Building, University Street, London, WC1E 6JJ, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hominid Palaeontology Research Group, Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology, The University of Liverpool, PO Box 147, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

    Fred Spoor & Bernard Wood

  2. Department of Radiology, Utrecht University Hospital, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Frans Zonneveld

Authors
  1. Fred Spoor
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  2. Bernard Wood
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  3. Frans Zonneveld
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Spoor, F., Wood, B. & Zonneveld, F. Implications of early hominid labyrinthine morphology for evolution of human bipedal locomotion. Nature 369, 645–648 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/369645a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/369645a0

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