Evolution of the Human Foot

Nature News has an interesting examination of how the human foot evolved the arch, the singular most important aspect in the ability to perform bipedal locomotion.  Glen Lichtwark and Luke Kelly write:

Humans evolved to walk and run effectively on the ground using two feet. Our arched foot, which is not a characteristic of other primates, is a unique feature crucial for human bipedalism. The arch provides the foot with the stiffness necessary to act as a lever that transmits the forces generated by leg muscles as they push against the ground. The arch also retains sufficient flexibility to function like a spring to store and then release mechanical energy. Writing in Nature, Venkadesan et al.1 present a new view of how foot stiffness is regulated. Their finding not only has exciting implications for understanding foot evolution, but also provides a possible framework when considering foot health and how to design better footwear.

The authors note that there are two different arches present in the human foot, the longitudinal arch, which is more familiar to people and the transverse arch. They argue that the transverse arch (across the top of the foot) is as important for walking as the longitudinal arch. The authors note that the transverse arch has been neglected in sports and medicine and that more research needs to be done in this area. 

Palaeoanthropology For Free!

Jean-Jacques Hublin, one of the most well-respected palaeoanthropologists has written a short piece for Nature News on the state of access to biophysical data.  He writes:

Being refused the right to examine a sought-after specimen is a common experience in the professional life of a palaeoanthropologist. Too often I have heard in the back rooms of museums that “nobody can find the key to the Neanderthal's cabinet”, “the fossil is away on exhibition” or “it is currently being reconstructed”. Human fossils that make international celebrities of their discoverers are difficult to find in geological strata, but they can become unreachable relics when they are in storage.

Been there, done that. It is no fun. Milford Wolpoff wrote once upon a time that he was allowed to see the Bodo face and partial cranium only under the conditions that he was not allowed to take pictures or measurements of it. He wrote (paraphrased) that he was surpised that it was "not facing the wall, out of respect."  But things have changed.  Hublin continues:

The release online earlier this week of a large series of palaeoanthropological data — produced by my department from the hominin collection of the Kromdraai B site near Johannesburg, South Africa — is an important new step (http://paleo.eva.mpg.de; see also M. M. Skinner et al. J. Hum. Evol. 64, 434–447; 2013). This collaboration between the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria and the MPI-EVA makes images and three-dimensional surface models of each Kromdraai specimen freely accessible. Highlights include the type specimen of Paranthropus robustus first described in 1938, as well as some never-published specimens. Researchers can also download the microCT data through a password-protected system controlled by curators of the Ditsong Museum. To move forward, the field requires such offerings to become more widespread.

One can only hope that this will be seen as a model for others to follow with regard to the data. It is clear that, when one plows through the three volume set by Oakley (and other volumes that have come out since) there is a veritable ton of material to process but in this day and age, it would be an incredible boon to researchers and would vastly expand the field.When Bill Howells went around the world measuring modern human crania and publishing it, when it became computationally feasible, he turned the entire collection loose on the world.  I, along with countless other Ph.D. students, used it in my dissertation.