{"id":21292,"date":"2025-01-31T14:51:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T15:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21292"},"modified":"2025-01-31T15:53:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T15:53:14","slug":"see-lucy-run-3-2-million-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21292","title":{"rendered":"See Lucy Run, 3.2 Million Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our early human ancestor was capable of running, if slowly, a new study finds.<\/p>\n

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Researchers made a virtual reconstruction of the leg and pelvic muscles \u2014 which are not preserved in fossils \u2014 of the female Australopithecus afarensis, or Lucy, who probably was \u201cnot a natural runner.\u201d<\/span>Bates et al. (2025), Current Biology<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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More than three million years after her death, the early human ancestor known as Lucy is still divulging her secrets.<\/p>\n

In 2016, an autopsy indicated that the female Australopithecus afarensis, whose partial remains were found in Ethiopia in 1974 and is considered the most complete hominid fossil found to date, died from a fall out of a tree. Seven years later, a virtual reconstruction of her leg and pelvic muscles \u2014 which are not preserved in fossils \u2014 revealed that she stood about three and a half feet tall, weighed between 29 and 93 pounds, and was capable of standing and walking upright, similar to modern humans.<\/p>\n

A new study published in the journal Current Biology<\/a> proposes that Lucy was capable of running, too. But she would not have been much of a marathoner and might have struggled to keep up with a contemporary couch potato in a 100-yard dash. \u201cShe was not a natural runner,\u201d said Karl Bates, an evolutionary biomechanics researcher at the University of Liverpool and lead author of the paper. \u201cIn all probability, she could run only through short bursts of energy rather than long-distance chases.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fossil, which dates to 3.2 million years ago and represents 40 percent of Lucy\u2019s skeleton, is often described as having a mix of human and ape features. \u201cHer overall body size was much smaller than ours and her upper body larger, with longer arms and shorter legs,\u201d Dr. Bates said. \u201cEven after correction for differences in body size, she would have been much slower than people.\u201d His team\u2019s conclusions bolster the hypothesis that the ability of humans to run long distances is an adaptation that gave them an advantage in acquiring prey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The analysis was drawn from computer-based movement simulations of Lucy\u2019s leg muscles. The model used the surface area of her bones and the muscular architecture of modern apes to estimate her muscle mass. \u201cThe simulator experiments with millions and millions of different sequences until it finds the one that leads to the fastest speed with minimum energy cost,\u201d Dr. Bates said. The researchers compared Lucy\u2019s performances with those of a digital model of a modern human whose measurements echoed those of the 5-foot-9, 154-pound Dr. Bates, who is 38.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Side-by-side comparisons of the optimal maximal speed running gait of Lucy with a modern human-like leg muscle architecture and non-human ape-like leg architecture.<\/span>Bates et al. (2025), Current Biology<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Our early human ancestor was capable of running, if slowly, a new study finds.Researchers made a virtual reconstruction of the leg and pelvic muscles \u2014 which are not preserved in fossils \u2014 of the female Australopithecus afarensis, or Lucy, who probably was \u201cnot a natural runner.\u201dBates et al. (2025), Current BiologyMore than three million years after her death, the early human ancestor known as Lucy is still divulging her secrets.In 2016, an autopsy indicated that the female Australopithecus afarensis, whose partial remains were found in Ethiopia in 1974 and is considered the most complete hominid fossil found to date, died from a fall out of a tree. Seven years later, a virtual reconstruction of her leg and pelvic muscles \u2014 which are not preserved in fossils \u2014 revealed that she stood about three and a half feet tall, weighed between 29 and 93 pounds, and was capable of standing and walking upright, similar to modern humans.A new study published in the journal Current Biology proposes that Lucy was capable of running, too. But she would not have been much of a marathoner and might have struggled to keep up with a contemporary couch potato in a 100-yard dash. \u201cShe was not a natural runner,\u201d said Karl Bates, an evolutionary biomechanics researcher at the University of Liverpool and lead author of the paper. \u201cIn all probability, she could run only through short bursts of energy rather than long-distance chases.\u201dThe fossil, which dates to 3.2 million years ago and represents 40 percent of Lucy\u2019s skeleton, is often described as having a mix of human and ape features. \u201cHer overall body size was much smaller than ours and her upper body larger, with longer arms and shorter legs,\u201d Dr. Bates said. \u201cEven after correction for differences in body size, she would have been much slower than people.\u201d His team\u2019s conclusions bolster the hypothesis that the ability of humans to run long distances is an adaptation that gave them an advantage in acquiring prey.The analysis was drawn from computer-based movement simulations of Lucy\u2019s leg muscles. The model used the surface area of her bones and the muscular architecture of modern apes to estimate her muscle mass. \u201cThe simulator experiments with millions and millions of different sequences until it finds the one that leads to the fastest speed with minimum energy cost,\u201d Dr. Bates said. The researchers compared Lucy\u2019s performances with those of a digital model of a modern human whose measurements echoed those of the 5-foot-9, 154-pound Dr. Bates, who is 38.Side-by-side comparisons of the optimal maximal speed running gait of Lucy with a modern human-like leg muscle architecture and non-human ape-like leg architecture.Bates et al. (2025), Current BiologyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21294,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21292"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21297,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21292\/revisions\/21297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}