{"id":5200,"date":"2016-12-14T17:26:24","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T22:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5200"},"modified":"2016-12-14T17:26:24","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T22:26:24","slug":"lucy-may-have-been-an-avid-tree-climber-bone-analysis-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/lucy-may-have-been-an-avid-tree-climber-bone-analysis-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Lucy&#8217; may have been an avid tree climber, bone analysis suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5201\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5201\" class=\"wp-image-5201\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lucy-1024x1009.png\" alt=\"Limb Bone Structural Proportions and Locomotor Behavior in A.L. 288-1 (&quot;Lucy&quot;) (Image credit: Christopher B. Ruff; M. Loring Burgess; Richard A. Ketcham; John Kappelman)\" width=\"600\" height=\"591\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lucy-1024x1009.png 1024w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lucy-300x295.png 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lucy.png 1996w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5201\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Limb bone structural proportions in A.L. 288-1 (&#8220;Lucy&#8221;)<br \/> <em>(Image credit: Christopher B. Ruff; M. Loring Burgess; Richard A. Ketcham; John Kappelman)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>New study gives insight into the lifestyles of early humans &#8211; with the help of &#8216;Lucy&#8217;, the famous 3.18 million-year-old <em>Australopithecus afarensis<\/em> fossil discovered in Africa. Bone analysis of Lucy&#8217;s upper arm and upper leg bones reveals that the relative strength of the <em>Australopithecus<\/em> limbs was between that of humans and chimpanzees. These findings also suggest that Lucy and her relatives had stronger arms and a less efficient gait than modern humans, thus leading researchers to the conclusion that early hominids likely spent more of their time in the tree canopy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Christopher B. Ruff, M. Loring Burgess, Richard A. Ketcham, John Kappelman<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corresponding author:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Christopher B. Ruff, Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, US<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0166095\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a> published in <em>PLOS One<\/em> on November 30, 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New study gives insight into the lifestyles of early humans &#8211; with the help of &#8216;Lucy&#8217;, the famous 3.18 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis fossil discovered in Africa. Bone analysis of Lucy&#8217;s upper arm and upper leg bones reveals that the relative strength of the Australopithecus limbs was between that of humans and chimpanzees. These findings also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2773,2696,2538],"class_list":["post-5200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-bone-analysis","tag-early-humans","tag-primates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lucy.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1lS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5202,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200\/revisions\/5202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}