ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Hip extensor mechanics and the evolution of walking and climbing capabilities in humans, apes, and fossil hominins.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Environmental Context of Hominin Foot Evolution.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Bipedalism or bipedalisms: The os coxae of StW 573.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- The locomotor ecology of wild western lowland gorillas: How does the largest ape exploit complex arboreal environments?Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Earliest evidence of hominin bipedalism inScience advances · 2026Article
- Multidimensional performance trade-offs in bipedal standing of common chimpanzees and implications for human bipedal evolution.iScience · 2025Article
- Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Trabecular Architecture of the Proximal Tibia in Extant Hominids.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Hip stabilization in an australopithecine-like hip: the influence of shape on muscle activation.Biology open · 2025Article
- Trabecular architecture of the distal femur in extant hominids.Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- The work to swing limbs in humans versus chimpanzees and its relation to the metabolic cost of walking.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Three-dimensional volumetric muscle reconstruction of theRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Exploring the effects of skeletal architecture and muscle properties on bipedal standing in the common chimpanzee (Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2023Article
- Ape femoral-humeral rigidities and arboreal locomotion.American journal of biological anthropology · 2022Article
- Article
- Pathways to primate hip function.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Variability and the form-function framework in evolutionary biomechanics and human locomotion.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Review
- Reconstructing Articular Cartilage in theIntegrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Article
- Female excellence in rock climbing likely has an evolutionary origin.Current research in physiology · 2021Review
- Insights into the lower torso in late Miocene hominoidProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
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10 authors.
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Abstract
The evolutionary emergence of humans' remarkably economical walking gait remains a focus of research and debate, but experimentally validated approaches linking locomotor capability to postcranial anatomy are limited. In this study, we integrated 3D morphometrics of hominoid pelvic shape with experimental measurements of hip kinematics and kinetics during walking and climbing, hamstring activity, and passive range of hip extension in humans, apes, and other primates to assess arboreal-terrestrial trade-offs in ischium morphology among living taxa. We show that hamstring-powered hip extension during habitual walking and climbing in living apes and humans is strongly predicted, and likely constrained, by the relative length and orientation of the ischium. Ape pelves permit greater extensor moments at the hip, enhancing climbing capability, but limit their range of hip extension, resulting in a crouched gait. Human pelves reduce hip extensor moments but permit a greater degree of hip extension, which greatly improves walking economy (i.e., distance traveled/energy consumed). Applying these results to fossil pelves suggests that early hominins differed from both humans and extant apes in having an economical walking gait without sacrificing climbing capability.
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