ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Fossil hominin shoulders support an African ape-like last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- African ape carpal morphology is not too specialized to represent the ancestral hominin carpus.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Earliest evidence of hominin bipedalism inScience advances · 2026Article
- Scapular morphological variations and sex-related and generational differences in global scapular shape: three-dimensional morphometric analysis using a homologous model.JSES reviews, reports, and techniques · 2025Article
- Gut fungal profiles reveal phylosymbiosis and codiversification across humans and nonhuman primates.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Locomotor signals in the trabecular structure of the hominoid clavicle.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Sexual dimorphism and allometry in human scapula shape.Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- A comparative approach for characterizing the relationship among morphology, range-of-motion and locomotor behaviour in the primate shoulder.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- A comparative probabilistic analysis of human and chimpanzee rotator cuff functional capacity.Journal of anatomy · 2023Article
- Towards a great ape dictionary: Inexperienced humans understand common nonhuman ape gestures.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Free hand hitting of stone-like objects in wild gorillas.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Anthropological Prosociality via Sub-Group Level Selection.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2022Article
- Evolutionary development of the Homo antecessor scapulae (Gran Dolina site, Atapuerca) suggests a modern-like development for Lower Pleistocene Homo.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Article
- Three-dimensional scapular morphology is associated with rotator cuff tears and alters the abduction moment arm of the supraspinatus.Clinical biomechanics (Bristol, Avon) · 2020Article
- The African ape-like foot ofeLife · 2019Article
- The morphology and evolutionary history of the glenohumeral joint of hominoids: A review.Ecology and evolution · 2019Review
- Three-dimensional kinematics and the origin of the hominin walking stride.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2018Article
- Evidence of a chimpanzee-sized ancestor of humans but a gibbon-sized ancestor of apes.Nature communications · 2017Article
- Resurrecting KIR2DP1: A Key Intermediate in the Evolution of Human Inhibitory NK Cell Receptors That Recognize HLA-C.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2017Article
- Pitfalls reconstructing the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Reconstructing the behavioral shifts that drove hominin evolution requires knowledge of the timing, magnitude, and direction of anatomical changes over the past ∼6-7 million years. These reconstructions depend on assumptions regarding the morphotype of the Homo-Pan last common ancestor (LCA). However, there is little consensus for the LCA, with proposed models ranging from African ape to orangutan or generalized Miocene ape-like. The ancestral state of the shoulder is of particular interest because it is functionally associated with important behavioral shifts in hominins, such as reduced arboreality, high-speed throwing, and tool use. However, previous morphometric analyses of both living and fossil taxa have yielded contradictory results. Here, we generated a 3D morphospace of ape and human scapular shape to plot evolutionary trajectories, predict ancestral morphologies, and directly test alternative evolutionary hypotheses using the hominin fossil evidence. We show that the most parsimonious model for the evolution of hominin shoulder shape starts with an African ape-like ancestral state. We propose that the shoulder evolved gradually along a single morphocline, achieving modern human-like configuration and function within the genus Homo. These data are consistent with a slow, progressive loss of arboreality and increased tool use throughout human evolution.
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