Seminar with Professor Carol Ward

Understanding how the transition to committed terrestrial  bipedality took place is key to deciphering how, and why, our lineage  evolved.  Although the limbs have received considerable attention,  primates vary in the shape and structure of their torsos, which reflects body posture, spinal mobility, and even limb  use.  New fossil pelves, ribs, vertebrae and other torso elements of  fossil apes and early hominins have been discovered over the past  several years and are shedding new light on the evolution  of body form in apes and humans.  Novel insights into the evolution of  ape and human body form not only give a new picture of the locomotor  transitions involved in hominin origins, but suggest that we need to  rethink the questions we are asking about how,  and why, hominins evolved.