Re: Bidpedalism

Jim Foley (jimf@vangelis.FtCollins.NCR.com)
1 Jun 1995 23:40:14 GMT

In article <3qki2g$dd4@portal.gmu.edu>,
HARRY R. ERWIN <herwin@osf1.gmu.edu> wrote:
>I ran into an interesting book by Oxnard on the postcranial adaptions of
>primates and australopithecines. The evidence is fairly strong that their
>motor behavior was like nothing known today. You can deduce that they
>probably were bipedal on the ground, but spent most of their time moving
>arboreally in the trees. H. habilis seems to be similar.

Is this his 1987? book, called "Fossils, Teeth and Sex", I think? I
haven't read it yet, only glanced through it in the library.

Oxnard also seems to think, according to one of the diagrams in that
book, that humans are not descended from any of the australopithecines,
and that the piths split off from a common ancestor about the same time
that we and the chimps did. That's what I understood from his book,
anyway.

Is this a correct statement of his views, and how likely are they to be
correct?

Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins
Jim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765
The clinching proof of my reasoning is that I will cut anyone who argues
further into dogmeat. -- Sir Geoffery de Tourneville, ca 1350 A.D.