Human ancestors moved from climbing trees to walking on the ground 1.8 million years ago
A new study published in Science Advances suggests that human ancestors transitioned from tree-climbing to habitual ground-walking approximately 1.8 million years ago. Researchers analyzed limb bone strength in fossils to determine the physical demands and locomotor behaviors of early hominids.
Why it matters
This finding provides critical evidence for a major evolutionary milestone, clarifying the timeline of human bipedalism.
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When did our ancestors begin walking on two legs? This evolutionary question about our terrestrial bipedalism has piqued paleoanthropologists for years.
Now, a new study gives us the most conclusive evidence of when archaic humans transitioned from regularly climbing trees to habitually walking upright on the ground: and the answer is 1.8 million years ago. “Since the time of Darwin and Huxley, terrestrial bipedalism has been posed as a central tenet of the human ecological niche,” said the research paper published in the journal Science Advances .
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