3D muscle reconstruction reveals 3.2 million-year-old ancestor walked upright
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In the mid-1970s, scientists unearthed a fossil specimen in Ethiopia belonging to an ancient hominin species: Australopithecus afarensis.
This 3.2 million-year-old skeleton fossils came to be famously known as “Lucy” — named after the Beatles' hit "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
A Cambridge University researcher has now been able to reconstruct Lucy's missing soft tissues digitally. The 3D reconstruction shows that Lucy and other members of this hominid species were likely able to stand upright as we do today.
3D reconstruction of muscles
Lucy was a young adult at the time of her death, standing over one meter tall, weighing over 28kg, and having a smaller brain.
Australopithecus had an ape-like face and could walk on two legs, allowing them to live in both trees and savannahs. This allowed the species to survive for almost a million years back then.
“Australopithecus afarensis would have roamed areas of open wooded grassland as well as more dense forests in East Africa around 3 to 4 million years ago. These reconstructions of Lucy’s muscles suggest that she would have been able to exploit both habitats effectively,” said Ashleigh Wiseman, who led this reconstruction work, in an official release.
Wiseman used recently released open-source data on the Lucy fossil to create 3D models of the leg and pelvic muscles.
36 muscles were reconstructed in each leg using 3D modeling, albeit most seemed much larger in Lucy. They also compared the recreated muscles to those of modern humans.
In comparison, the muscles in Lucy’s calves and thighs were measured to be twice the size of those found in modern humans. The 3D-digital musculoskeletal model revealed that 74 percent of the total muscle mass in Lucy’s thigh, whereas humans only have 50 percent.
How Lucy walked is hard to crack
Paleoanthropologists believe that Lucy walked on two legs (bipedal), although they disagree on how. Some speculate that Lucy walked in a crouching waddle manner, similar to chimps. Others contend that her locomotion was more akin to our upright bipedalism.
Walking upright implies that Lucy can straighten her knee joints, as evidenced by her knee extensor muscles.
“We are now the only animal that can stand upright with straight knees. Lucy’s muscles suggest that she was as proficient at bipedalism as we are, while possibly also being at home in the trees. Lucy likely walked and moved in a way that we do not see in any living species today,” Wiseman said.
Scientists may now use these reconstructions to learn more about how our ancestors walked. “Muscle reconstructions have already been used to gauge the running speeds of a T-Rex, for example. By applying similar techniques to ancestral humans, we want to reveal the spectrum of physical movement that propelled our evolution – including those capabilities we have lost,” concluded Wiseman.
The study has been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
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