Habitual upright bipedalism - walking exclusively on two straight legs - is one of the key evolutionary adaptations that sets modern humans apart from other primates. In contrast, the crouched form of bipedalism used by our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, represents the best available example of how our early bipedal ancestors would have walked. Therefore, advancing our understanding of bipedal locomotion in chimpanzees is central to understanding the evolution of locomotion in humans.
In this project, an interdisciplinary team of scientists will use state-of-the-art computer modeling and lab-based experimental techniques to study the mechanics, energetics, and control of bipedal locomotion in chimpanzees. Specifically, the researchers will develop a computer model of the chimpanzee musculoskeletal system that will be used to generate simulations of bipedal walking. The musculoskeletal model will be used to evaluate the impact of specific morphological adaptations that have been proposed to play a role in the evolution of human bipedalism. The computer model will be complemented by a detailed set of empirically derived locomotor data that will be collected on chimpanzee subjects. These data will fully document bipedal locomotion in chimpanzees, and will aid in generating and validating the bipedal walking simulations. Together, these modeling and experimental investigations will be used to reconstruct the most likely manner in which the australopithecine ancestors of humans walked on two legs, and by so doing, determine if australopithecine bipedality was transitional between that of apes and humans.
The broader impacts of this research will target both scientific and educational domains. The researchers plan to make the computer simulation models and corresponding experimental data widely and freely available to other scientists, and develop a learning module based on the models that can be used in teaching functional morphology and biomechanics. Moreover, this project will support the research of two successful female scientists, and the mentoring of postdoctoral fellows and both graduate and undergraduate students. By training the next generation of scientists and creating freely-available model and data resources, this project will facilitate discoveries in the evolution of human locomotion that go far beyond the present project.
