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The 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton called Lucy. Michael Stravato/AP/Press Association Images

Human ancestor walked like man, climbed like ape

Ancient human ancestor could still climb trees like monkeys, a study has shown.

MORE THAN THREE million years ago, ancient ancestors of humans were walking upright — but they could still climb trees like monkeys, a study showed Thursday in the US journal “Science.”

Based on careful analysis of a pair of shoulder blades — both exceptionally well-preserved from a skeleton of a three-year-old Australopithecus afarensis girl — scientists were able to settle a question intensely debated by anthropologists for more than three decades.

The girl, called Selam, lived some 3.3 million years ago, and is from the same species as Lucy, one of the earliest hominid skeletons ever uncovered.

Selam was discovered in 2000 in the Ethiopian region of Dikika. For 11 years after that, Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences worked carefully with Kenyan lab technician Christopher Kiarie to extract her shoulder blades from the rest of the skeleton.

“Because shoulder blades are paper-thin, they rarely fossilize — and when they do, they are almost always fragmentary,” Alemseged said in a statement.

“So finding both shoulder blades completely intact and attached to a skeleton of a known and pivotal species was like hitting the jackpot.”

Alemseged said the study suggests that our ancestors stopped climbing behavior much later than suggested by previous research.

Once the shoulder blades were extracted, Alemseged and co-author David Green of Midwestern University compared them to other early human relatives and to adult skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis.

They also compared the bones to those of modern apes.

“When we compared Selam’s scapula with adult members of Australopithecus afarensis, it was clear that the pattern of growth was more consistent with that of apes than humans,” Green said.

“It’s really an interesting transition: they show evidence for bipedalism,” or walking on two feet, he told AFP. “But we think they maintained the adaptation for climbing as well. They climbed to escape predators, for food.”

Green said it remains unclear just when humans shifted away from climbing.

By the time homo erectus emerged around 1.9 million years ago, the skeleton had changed significantly: “it’s much longer, leaner, with proportions more like those of modern humans,” he said.

But “between Lucy, which is about 3.5 million years ago, to the homo erectus, there is a long gap we are trying to fill with fossils to understand,” Green explained.

Alemseged said the new information helps fill in the picture of the evolution towards homo sapiens.

“This new find confirms the pivotal place that Lucy and Selam’s species occupies in human evolution,” he said.

“Though not fully human, A. afarensis was clearly on its way.”

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    Mute Ciarán Ferrie
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:28 PM

    They could tell her name just be studying her shoulder blades!? Amazing!

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    Mute Damien Flinter
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    Oct 29th 2012, 1:44 PM

    Don’t be sarcastic..

    ..she had her goldcard in her handbag.

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    Mute Gaius Gracchus
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:16 PM

    3.3 million years ago, lol, everyone knows that the earth is only 15,000 years old, it’s in the Book of Genesis like

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    Mute Jack Jack
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    Oct 25th 2012, 9:26 PM

    Humans just got taller but some still walk like apes!

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    Mute richie meade
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    Oct 25th 2012, 11:19 PM

    Mr Poots would have an issue with this….http://www.edwinpoots.co.uk/biography.html

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    Mute Paddy Mac
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    Oct 25th 2012, 9:30 PM

    There’s still a few apes above in the Dail

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    Mute Cornelius Crow
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:07 PM

    Paddy have you ever considered therapy?

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    Mute Paddy Mac
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:23 PM

    No cornelius I’m not a fan of alternative rock bands

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    Mute Oh boy
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    Oct 25th 2012, 11:57 PM

    But Paddys joke was funny. Why so much dislikes and silly comment by Corn?

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    Mute Damien Flinter
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    Oct 31st 2012, 11:10 AM

    YOU may be amused…

    ..some of us higher primates will be taking legal advice.

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    Mute Jill :D
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:51 PM

    Yay more evidence to make people who dont “believe” in evolution feel stupid! :D

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    Mute john cooling
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    Oct 26th 2012, 1:09 AM

    Why doesn’t the bible mention this,or dinosaurs for that matter? #brainwashedfrombirth

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    Mute Floyd Moons
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    Oct 26th 2012, 9:08 AM

    I presume you know the word for Dinosaur was coined in 1841.
    King James Translation Bible was 1611.
    Read Job 40 15-24 and notice how the animal described sounds like a dinosaur.

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    Mute Floyd Moons
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    Oct 26th 2012, 9:08 AM

    I presume you know the word for Dinosaur was coined in 1841.
    King James Translation Bible was 1611.
    Read Job 40 15-24 and notice how the animal described sounds like a dinosaur.

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    Mute Floyd Moons
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    Oct 26th 2012, 9:11 AM

    The King James Translation was 1611.
    The word for dinosaur was coined in 1841 so they didn’t have this word either when it was first written or in the early English translations.
    Read Job 40 15-24 and see if the animal they described sounds like a dinosaur.

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    Mute Floyd Moons
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    Oct 26th 2012, 9:13 AM

    Sorry for the reposts .Iphone acting up.

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    Mute Martin Grehan
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    Oct 26th 2012, 1:03 AM

    Creationist stick their fingers in their ears and go LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU

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    Mute Albert McEinstein
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    Oct 25th 2012, 9:51 PM

    Maybe the apes evolved from homo sapiens. Maybe we are the missing link >:|

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    Mute Damien Flinter
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    Oct 29th 2012, 2:04 PM

    Please Al. No need to insult us.

    Any creature dumb enough to label itself ‘sapiens sapiens’ is no kin of ours.

    Your line descended from Adam, the one that was incapable of holding both branch and banana simultaneously, fell from the canopy and landed on his skull.
    When he came round he was raving about apples and serpents and where was his banana(which was lodged in a branch-fork halfway down) and wandered off into the hills and was missing for two full moons.
    When he reappeared he was clutching a banana shaped nugget of yellow rock and drooling about his ‘precious’.
    Evie took pity, more’s the pity, and shacked up with him and it just spiralled downhill from there to the Swiss vaults.

    Sad old tale, we talk about it even here in Sumatra as ye slash and burn the last of our forests looking for that long lost banana.
    Evolution has its cul-de-sacs. Get over it.

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    Mute Mjhint
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    Oct 25th 2012, 9:36 PM

    I dont believe this.Has anyone contacted eric hovind to confirm this?

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    Mute Candace White
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    Oct 26th 2012, 9:16 AM

    I wonder what our architecture would look like if we could still climb like apes?

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    Mute Joe McDermott
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:37 PM

    What a load of horse manure, we have found an old leg bone. From this we can tell he led a sedentary lifestyle and was a huewor for the women.

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    Mute Vinnie Mulvihill
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    Oct 25th 2012, 11:21 PM

    that comment is about as much use here send a tit on a wheelbarrow

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    Mute Joe McDermott
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    Oct 26th 2012, 12:51 AM

    Send a tit on a wheelbarrow? Shurup Vinnie

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    Mute Chris Coffey
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    Oct 26th 2012, 3:23 AM

    There’s a wealth of archaeological and anthropological sciences dedicated to the understanding of a plethora of questions skeletal remains. Questions that can, and are, often answered with definitive results grounded in solid analysis and data. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it has no merit.

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    Mute shadow75
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    Oct 26th 2012, 3:08 AM

    Whoooooo religion,spooky

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    Mute B Lowe
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    Oct 25th 2012, 9:53 PM

    I’m with Michael Cremo on this. Anatomically modern humans have been around for tens of millions of years.
    Lucy is load of rubbish.

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    Mute Brendan Palmer
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    Oct 25th 2012, 10:06 PM

    Lucy, born 26/01/99 is beautiful

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    Mute Belly Up
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    Oct 25th 2012, 11:30 PM

    Ah yes B Lowe with more rubbish to add to another conversation.

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    Mute Strongbow62
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    Oct 26th 2012, 6:54 AM

    @ b Lowe , there are those of us that believe in what’s known only. You believe in what isn’t . By believing in the unsubstantiated you can believe in unlimited wonderful things, like for example angels , fairies and gods and humans from millions of years ago. Try believing in no start no end and the “is” the fairies will go away but it will wreck your head. Parminedes.

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    Mute Oh boy
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    Oct 25th 2012, 11:52 PM

    It’s still quite possible that the whole evolution thing might prove completely different theory if we discover more things.

    We can’t claim to know it all. We thought thunder was a god

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    Mute SkepticallySpeaking
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    Nov 2nd 2012, 3:57 PM

    Any theory that runs counter to evolution has an extraordinary burden of proof to overcome. And rightly so, the theory of evolution, continually refined, has been backed up time and time again when discoveries are made that have been predicted by the theory. Hard to believe that it is only in the last 150 or so years that we have had our eyes opened to the exciting family tree of life.

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    Mute Mary Kavanagh
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    Oct 26th 2012, 1:37 AM

    “There were giants in those days”. Can’t remember where this is in the Bible. Sounds like Genesis (anyone know?). I read somewhere that scientists (some anyway) think this referred to giant bones of dinosaurs or mammoths that were found by ancient Israelites.

    Also, Tacitus or, more likely Suetonius, in his life of Augustus says that among his (Augustus’s) many collections was one of giant bones of animals no longer living. Sounds very much like fossils, doesn’t it?

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    Mute Damien Flinter
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    Oct 29th 2012, 2:07 PM

    Maybe they stumbled on the elephants graveyard.

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    Mute jrbmc
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    Oct 26th 2012, 9:18 AM

    Oh, oobee doo
    I wanna be like you
    I wanna walk like you
    Talk like you, too
    You’ll see it’s true
    An ape like me
    Can learn to be human too

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    Mute Marist '59
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    Oct 26th 2012, 10:27 AM

    Just had a communication from a Young Earth Creationist insisting that Lucy died between 1930-37. Who to believe?

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    Mute Damien Flinter
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    Oct 29th 2012, 2:15 PM

    hmmm. 1930 – 1937…7.35 p.m. approx. Depending how long it took her biochronometer to run down after impact.

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