In this video segment adapted from NOVA, see how paleoanthropologists—including Don Johanson, with his famous discovery of the Australopithecus afarensis "Lucy"—have used the fossil record to identify ...

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A male western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo. The origin of human bipedalism has long been a hot topic among paleoanthropologists. At the very least it is seen as something ...

It has long been believed that our prehistoric ancestors started walking on two legs as they moved from the trees into the more open environment of the African savanna. A new study of chimpanzees, ...

In recent decades, scientists have debated whether a seven-million-year-old fossil was bipedal—a trait that would make it the oldest human ancestor. A new analysis by a team of anthropologists offers ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Bipedal locomotion - walking upright on two legs - is a fundamental trait underpinning humankind's success. Scientists now have identified two innovations that occurred long ago ...

An artist's impression of Graecopithecus freybergi. (Velizar Simeonovski) Around 7 million years ago, a little creature ...

Walking on two legs has long been considered a milestone in human evolution and one of our most defining characteristics. Until now, researchers assumed that the first humans originated in Africa and ...

Carl Sagan famously said, “We are made of star stuff.” For modern humans, this may be true in a very unexpected way. Research published Tuesday in The Journal of Geology suggests that stars are what ...

Human bipedalism may have evolved to protect babies too heavy to hang on our increasingly hairless bodies, says Brazilian physicist Lia Amaral. Apart from Homo sapiens, primate babies cling to the fur ...