Lucy, our 3.2 million-year-old ancestor of the species Australopithecus afarensis, may not have won gold in the Olympics – but new evidence suggests she was able to run upright. According to digital simulations developed by researchers in the UK and the Netherlands, Lucy would have been able to reach top speeds of 4.97 meters per second (16.3 feet per second).
This means she would quickly be outflanked by the average 21st-century runner, who can achieve a pace of 7.9 meters per second (25.9 feet per second), and utterly outpaced by Usain Bolt, who ran an average of 10.44 meters per second (34.2 feet per second) in his record-breaking 2009 sprint.
To create these simulations, Lucy’s skeleton was combined with muscular features seen in modern-day apes and added to existing software developed to demonstrate motion in animals. Despite not having the long Achilles tendon and shorter leg muscle fibers that support running performance in humans today, she appeared able to run on two legs. However, it is unlikely she would have spent much time running for fun. To analyze energy expenditure, the researchers also added human ankle muscles to the simulated Lucy. They found running would have been much harder for her than it is for us.
The study’s authors say the simulations put weight to the theory that humans specifically evolved certain traits in order to boost their running performance – it wasn’t simply “a byproduct of selection for enhanced walking capabilities”. According to some theories, humans developed the skill of long-distance running to enable us to hunt animals. This is a hypothesis that has been supported by recent studies.
Lucy and her kin were a group of hominins who inhabited East Africa some 2.9 to 3.9 million years ago. The pint-sized A. afarensis carried a mixture of ape-like and human-like features, hence the nickname “the missing link”.
This is just the latest discovery relating to Lucy, whose fossilized bones were discovered in Ethiopia fifty years ago. Thanks to the excellent preservation of her skeleton, she has been an invaluable source of knowledge to anthropologists.
The study is published in the journal Current Biology.
Source Link: Was Lucy The First Long Distance Runner?
