ArticleCommunications biology2025
Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins.
Article in Communications biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Environmental Context of Hominin Foot Evolution.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- A kinematic convergence in ape and monkey vertical climbing informs debates on early hominin arborealism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Peak pressure experienced by the human hand during suspension and vertical climbing.Biology open · 2026Article
- Growing together: Developmental integration and modularity in the human talus-calcaneus complex.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Earliest evidence of hominin bipedalism inScience advances · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
The origin of the human lineage was catalyzed by bipedalism, but how this locomotor mode evolved is debated. We investigated the evolutionary context of human bipedalism by analyzing the morphology of the 4.4 million-year-old hominin talus attributed to Ardipithecus ramidus (ARA-VP-6/500-023). Our results demonstrate that ARA-VP-6/500-023 bears similarities to the tali of chimpanzees and gorillas, who are adapted to vertical climbing and terrestrial plantigrade quadrupedalism. Additionally, we identify the presence of derived features in ARA-VP-6/500-023 consistent with previous suggestions of an enhanced push-off mechanism in the foot of Ar. ramidus. Our observations of the human and ape fossil record are inconsistent with recently proposed models of human origins, which envision the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees as a generalized arboreal ape. Instead, our results strongly imply that humans evolved from an African ape-like ancestor, which directly narrows the range of explanations for the origin of our lineage.
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