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Posture, Locomotion and Bipedality: The Case of the Gerenuk (Litocranius walleri)

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Book cover Human Paleontology and Prehistory

Part of the book series: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology ((VERT))

Abstract

Most explanations for the origin of hominin bipedality cannot be comparatively tested, because there are no other striding bipeds among mammals. However, there are other mammals that stand bipedally for long periods of time. One such is the gerenuk (Litocranius walleri) , an African gazelle that browses while standing bipedally, with extended hips and knees and a marked lumbar lordosis . Despite these behavioral resemblances to humans, Richter’s (1970) extensive comparative study of gerenuk anatomy found only one skeletal apomorphy specifically related to bipedality – namely, a reduction in the lumbar spinous processes, which permits that lumbar lordosis. Our data show that gerenuks lack two other features – an expanded cranial sector of the acetabular semilunar surface, and “wedging” of the lumbar vertebral bodies – that we had expected from their bipedal positional behavior. We infer that even prolonged and extensive postural bipedality results in little or no postcranial remodeling, unless selection favoring the maintenance of efficient quadrupedal locomotion is relaxed. This conclusion undercuts theories, such as Hunt’s (1994) “postural feeding hypothesis,” that portray early hominin postcranial apomorphies as having originated as adaptations to bipedal feeding postures rather than to bipedal locomotion .

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Judith M. Chupasko and the rest of the staff at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for their unflagging help and support. We also thank the staff of the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum (London), and the Miami MetroZoo for their help. This research was financed by grants from Boston University.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Boston University, 232 Bay State Rd, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Matt Cartmill & Kaye Brown

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  1. Matt Cartmill
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Correspondence to Matt Cartmill .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy & Anthropolog, Tel-Aviv University Department of Anatomy & Anthropolog, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Assaf Marom

  2. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology, Jerusalem, Israel

    Erella Hovers

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Cartmill, M., Brown, K. (2017). Posture, Locomotion and Bipedality: The Case of the Gerenuk (Litocranius walleri). In: Marom, A., Hovers, E. (eds) Human Paleontology and Prehistory. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46646-0_6

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