Importance Of Bipedalism

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The development and Significance of Bipedalism in Early Hominids to Human Evolution
Clearly bipedalism is important and has some significant role to human evolution; if it didn’t have such importance modern day humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) would not be bipedal. There are many vital stages of human evolution that’s leads to us humans being successful at adapting to their environment and by extension surviving; one of these vital evolutionary stages is bipedalism. What is bipedalism? This is the ability to move around on two legs upright instead of moving around on all fours. Bipedalism played a very significant role in the development of early hominids in evolution.
According to M. Friedman, ‘the development of bipedalism was the first significant adaptation that distinguished hominids from other apes.” This quote shows that bipedalism was truly a revolutionary development and it had great influence on human evolution. Dictonary.com explains a hominid as ‘any of the modern or extinct bipedal primates including all species of the genus Homo and Australopithecus.’ The first bipedal hominid would have been the Australopithecus anamensis. Australopithecus anamensis tibia fossils which were found showed strong bipedalism, the tibia found had a right angle between the shaft and the proximal surface and dates back to 4.2-3.9 million years ago.
Australopithecus aferensis is another species that exhibit bipedalism; they lived about 4 to 2.8 million years ago and evolved from the Australopithecus anamensis. Lucy which happens to be one of the well-known fossils is a member of the species Australopithecus aferensis. There is substantial information about early bipedalism found in this species. According to elucy.org ‘Australopithecus afere...

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...ppear bigger to other species and probably intimidate them. Another advantage that bipedalism would have brought was thermoregulation(the ability to keep the body temperature in a certain environment), according to elucy.com ‘a taller upright posture in the hot savanna environment enabled more heat to escape from the sides of the body because a lot more surface areas is exposed to the cooling wind and air.’
All of the developments of bipedalism and the advantages it bought along with it allowed hominids to evolve into the Homo sapiens sapiens were are today. Without bipedalism we wouldn’t be able to walk upright, use our hands which we use for a vast amount of things or keep our bodies at the right temperature in harsh conditions. Bipedalism had a significant role to play in the development of human evolution and by extension gave us a greater chance of surviving.

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