Elsevier

Journal of Human Evolution

Volume 36, Issue 2, February 1999, Pages 211-232
Journal of Human Evolution

Regular Article
Hip bone trabecular architecture shows uniquely distinctive locomotor behaviour in South African australopithecines

https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1998.0267Get rights and content

Abstract

Cancellous bone retains structural and behavioural properties which are time and strain-rate dependent. As the orientation of the trabeculae (trajectories) follows the direction of the principal strains imposed by daily loadings, habitual postural and locomotor behaviours are responsible for a variety of trabecular architectures and site-specific textural arrangements of the pelvic cancellous network. With respect to the great ape condition, the human trabecular pattern is characterized by a distinctive ilioischial bundle, an undivided sacropubic bundle, and a full diagonal crossing (∼100°) over the acetabulum between the ilioischial and the sacropubic bundles. Advanced digital image processing (DIP) of hip bone radiographs has revealed that adolescent and adult South African australopithecines retained an incompletely developed human-like trabecular pattern associated with gait-related features that are unique among the extant primates.

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Cited by (68)

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    Accordingly, the quantitative assessment of how internal bone structure of the proximal femur varies can be used to infer locomotion-related functional demands in extinct taxa. The reconstruction of the positional and locomotor repertoires of the australopiths (the term used here to refer to the taxa Australopithecus and Paranthropus) has progressively integrated information from the mechanosensitive internal structure of the hip joint to the classical studies on the outer skeletal morphology (e.g., Lovejoy, 1988, 2005; Ohman, 1993; Ohman et al., 1997; Macchiarelli et al., 1999, 2001; Ruff et al., 1999, 2016, 2020; Lovejoy et al., 2002; Volpato, 2007; Ruff and Higgins, 2013; Claxton, 2018; Ryan et al., 2018; Cazenave et al., 2019a; Georgiou et al., 2020). Compared to the condition displayed by the extant great apes, australopiths show an absolutely thinner superior cortex of the femoral neck relative to the inferior cortex.

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