Wednesday, July 27, 2005  'Lucy' walked upright just like us  A
robotics model of Australopithecus afarensis locomotion  Dr.
William I. Sellers a "computational primatologist" of
Loughborough University in the UK, and colleagues under
leadership of Professor Robin Crompton of the University of
Liverpool, have attempted to settle the question whether `Lucy'
was fully bipedal (walked fully upright with a striding gait),
as we modern humans do, a question that anthropologists still
disagree on.  `Lucy' is the name given to the ~3.2 million-year
ago Australopithecus afarensis 40% complete fossil skeleton
discovered at Hadar in Ethiopia by Donald Johanson in 1974. This
fossil, together with the ~3.5 mya Laetoli footprints preserved
in volcanic ash that were discovered in Tanzania in 1978, and
presumed to be made by an A. afarensis, were the earliest
evidence of full bipedality in a presumed human ancestor.  As
they reported in the journal Royal Society Interface, Sellers
and colleagues built a robotics model, with