Please see Lucca Lan, 3.2 million years ago

More than 3 million years after her death, the early human ancestors, known as Lucy, are still leaking her secret.

In 2016, the prosecution was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, and Australopitex AFARENSIS, a woman, regarded as the most complete human fossils seen so far, died from falling off the tree. I showed that. Seven years later, with her legs and pelvic muscles that have not been stored in fossils, she can walk upright, about 3.5 feet in height, 29 to 93 pounds. Ta. For modern humans.

New research in Journal Current Biology suggests that Lucy can be performed. But she wouldn't have been a marathon, and she might have had a hard time catching up with modern couch potes with a 100 -yard dash. “She was not a natural runner,” said Karl Bates, an advanced biomechanics researcher at the Liverpool University and the leader of the dissertation. “In all possibilities, she was able to run only a short energy, not long -distance tracking.”

The fossils recorded the date 3.2 million years ago, indicating 40 % of Lucy's skeleton, but is often explained that it is a mixture of human and an apes. “Her overall body size is much smaller than our one, her upper body is bigger, her arm is long, and her legs are shorter,” said Dr. Bates. “She would have been much slower than humans after fixing the size of the body size.” His team's conclusion is that humans are running long -range prey. Enhance the hypothesis that is the adaptation.

The analysis was brought out of the Lucy leg muscle computer -based movement simulation. This model estimated the muscle mass using the surface area of ​​her bones and the muscular architecture of a modern ape. “The simulator will experiment with millions and millions of different sequences to find the fastest speed at the minimum energy cost,” said Dr. Bates. Researchers compared Lucy's performance with the performance of a modern digital model that reflects the measured values ​​of Dr. Bates of 38 pounds of 38 and 154 pounds.

“The comparison between humans with the same muscle characteristics and Lucy has given the maximum maximum speed and minimum speed of Lucy,” he said. “In addition, we were able to compare the impact of important anatomical features in human evolution to the driving speed.”

Lucy's maximum driving speed estimation -with human -like muscles -is a relatively modest 11 mpH, and it can be roughly accomplished by household pigs in a quarter of miles, but the speed of sprinting speed. It was much slower than modern humans who exceeded 18 mph and exceeded the peak. Dr. Bates estimated that in a 100 -meter race, the world record holder, Usainbolt, broke Lucy between 50 and 80 meters.

Homoelectos, the first parent Relative, with human -like body, evolved in Africa about 1.9 million years ago. This species was an endurance runner built to chase the prey of the African open saver. Australopithecus AFARENSIS fossils are usually found in areas where the patches on the grassland were mainly patches. Lucy, built for short distances, would have rely on strategies other than pursuing hunting to collect foods such as mountain climbing.

“Overall, Himonin lived in a place with many trees, bushes and shrubs,” said Dennis Sue, an ancient researcher in Tempe, Arizona. Because there are more cover, it freezes as a response and cannot run the landscape fast with many cover. “

Lucy had to work hard to move quickly because there were no long elastic Achilles tendons and short muscle fibers in modern human legs. The advantage of a tendon connecting the calf muscles to the heel bone is that it acts like a huge spring, keeps energy while moving, and generates efficient driving walking. Achilles, an ape, is just a stub.

When human -like ankle muscles were added to Severus, the amount of energy they consumed was comparable to the energy of other animals of the same height. However, she tacked muscles like ankle muscles, and she would have spent three times more energy than modern humans.

“At this time, we were a bipedal monkey running around the landscape,” said Dr. Su. “Given the types of habitat where our early ancestors lived, this research suggests that fasting abilities were not important for Lucy's survival.”