Re: AAT and the bones

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In article <40l158$7tm@news.cc.ucf.edu> Thomas Clarke,
clarke@acme.ucf.edu writes:

>It seems to me that Lucy and other like-aged bipedal fossils have put
>the nail in the savannah hypothesis already. At the time of lucy,
>the savannah environments were only beginning to develop, hence it is
>hard to account for evolution of bidpedalism as a response to the
>change from forest to savannah when bipedalism predates this change.

The savanna idea has been dead for a long time. However, the idea that
modern, efficient bipedalism evolved as an adaptation to moving around in
a terrestrial environment is well supported.

>Bipedalism must have evolved in response to changes in the environment
>other than the forest/savannah transition.
>
>To my way of thinking, isolation on islands fills the bill nicely.

How is isolation on an island going to result in bipedalism?

Alex Duncan
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1086
512-471-4206
aduncan@mail.utexas.edu

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