<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\nArches in human feet put a spring in our step: they are stiff enough to propel us forward but flexible enough to absorb the shock at the end of each stride.<\/span><\/p>\nIt is thought that\u00a0A. aphaeresis<\/em> could walk on two feet but were unsure whether the creatures climbed and grasped tree branches as well, much like modern nonhuman apes. The fourth metatarsal according the new discovery shows that\u00a0 afarensis<\/em> moved around more like modern humans.<\/span><\/p>\n“Now that we know Lucy and her relatives had arches in their feet, this affects much of what we know about them, from where they lived to what they ate and how they avoided predators,” said Carol Ward, a professor of integrative anatomy at the University of Missouri-Columbia who led the analysis of the fossil.<\/span><\/p>\n“The development of arched feet was a fundamental shift toward the human condition, because it meant giving up the ability to use the big toe for grasping branches, signaling that our ancestors had finally abandoned life in the trees in favor of life on the ground.”<\/span><\/p>\nThe best-known example of\u00a0A. afarensis<\/em> is “Lucy”, who lived in Ethiopia more than 3m years ago. Before that, more than 4.4m years ago, Ethiopia was populated by\u00a0Ardipithecus ramidus<\/em>, which seems to have been a part-time terrestrial biped, though its foot had many of the features of tree-dwelling primates, including a highly mobile big toe.<\/span><\/p>\nUnlike other primates, human feet have two arches, which stretch along the length of the foot and across it. Ape feet do not have these arches and are far more flexible, with a mobile large toe that is useful for climbing trees and holding onto branches.<\/span><\/p>\nThese ape-like features are not present in the foot of\u00a0A. afarensis<\/em>, however. Given that its foot was more like that of modern humans; scientists think that\u00a0A. afarensis<\/em> no longer depended on the trees for refuge or resources 3m years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n“Arches in the feet are a key component of human-like walking because they absorb shock and also provide a stiff platform so that we can push off from our feet and move forward,” said Ward. “People today with ‘flat feet’ who lack arches have a host of joint problems throughout their skeletons. Understanding that the arch appeared very early in our\u00a0evolution shows that the unique structure of our feet is fundamental to human locomotion.<\/span><\/p>\n“If we can understand what we were designed to do and the natural selection that shaped the human skeleton, we can gain insight into how our skeletons work today. Arches in our feet were just as important for our ancestors as they are for us. For paleontologist these findings confirm that our human ancestors were walking on two legs by about 3.2m years ago.<\/span><\/p>\nWhile \u00a0bipedal locomotion or two-legged walking is one of the hallmarks of the human species, older human\u00a0fossils still show adaptations to spending some of their time in the trees … for feeding or nesting, but the evidence here suggests that by 3.2m years ago one of our ancestors,\u00a0Australopithecus afarensis<\/em>, was fully committed to bipedal walking.”<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\nThe debate on the Creationist evolutionist continues so long as the missing link between specious is large and the creatures will contuse to maintain their theory of creation to stand on the firm ground on their milliner believes.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recent discovery in Ethiopia a fossil more than 3m proving that human \u201c ancestors\u201d supposedly\u00a0 walking upright just by finding\u00a0 \u00a0a single \u00a0fourth metatarsal bone in Ethiopia. Like Lucy and Ardi recently has opened the debate that humans being is the outcome of Creation or Evolution more live. The majority of Ethiopians believe \u00a0firmly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":9771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,175,173,2746,2743,172,2744,2745,114],"tags":[4331,2747],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Evolution.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}