Bipedalism: The Science of Upright Walking Specialization

This course will help you learn how fossils give us an insight into how the early members of our lineage walked bipedally. The four million years old bone of Australopithecus anamensis is the oldest undisputed evidence for bipedalism in our lineage. Similarly, Lucy’s, who was Australopithecus afarensis, fossil also [...]

This course will help you learn that the shapes of bones reflect adaptations and the behaviors that animals frequently participate in. Understanding this relationship is critical for reconstructing the activities of animals in the past.

This course will take you through the kinematics of human locomotion including modeling upright walking as a controlled fall, how muscles and bones work together to move individuals using a series of joints and levers, and how the abductor mechanism works to solve the “seesaw problem” of side-to-side wobbling. [...]