PALAEOBLOG: Early Human Tree-Dwellers Were Also Bipedal
Now *that’s* a badass infographic.
To resolve how the fossil trackways were made, scientists this built a sand trackway in filmed human subjects walking across the sand. The subjects walked both with normal, erect human gaits and then with crouched, chimpanzee-like gaits. Three-dimensional models of the footprints were collected and examined. It was found that the relative depth of footprints at the heel and toe, and found that depths are about equal when made by a person walking with an erect gait. In contrast, the toe print is much deeper than the heel print when produced by a crouched gait, a product of the timing of weight transfer over the length of the foot.
