New Scientist;"Hominids started walking on two legs six million years ago, shortly after diverging from chimpanzees, according to a study of the inner structure of a fossilised thighbone. The finding puts upright posture at the base of the human family tree. The evolution of upright posture is a key issue in anthropology. Together with large brain size, it marks the dividing line between humans and the great apes. Researchers know that upright posture evolved first because the skeleton of famed Australopithecine, Lucy, has a small braincase but modern ankles. Yet with few known fossils older than about four million years, the details of how and when upright posture evolved have been hazy. Over the past few years, however, two important new finds have begun to fill in the gaps. The older animal is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which lived in Chad six to seven million years ago, but only its hominid cranium was found. More complete is the chimpanzee-sized Orrorin tugenensis, as 20 fossils from at least five individuals have been found in Kenya. These are about six million years old. In knuckle-walking chimps, the cortex is the same thickness on the top and bottom of the bone. However, bipedal, upright walking applies different forces, which means the cortex in humans is at least four times thicker on the bottom part of the bone. Senut found that the lower part of the thighbone in Orrorin is three times thicker than the upper - making its walking habits much closer to humans than chimps."
What is this Orrorin? Well I went looking and this is what I came up with:
Orrorin was a human ancestor adapted to both bipedality and tree climbing, and that the australopithecines are an extinct offshoot.-
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Orrorin;"
>>>To tell you the truth don't know if I know much more then I did before I read it, If I read it right we are still a off-spring of some kind of Monkey...LOL sorry guys I like this stuff don't always say I understand it..
