I know this is late in responding, but I had to reply.
Now, they discovered that knuckle-walking apes have a mechanism that locks the wrist into place in order to stablilize this joint. In their report, they noted:
"Here we present evidence that fossils attributed to Australopithecus anamensis (KNM-ER-20419) and A. afarensis (AL 288-1) retain specialized wrist morphology associated with knuckle -walking."
This species does not have any human attributes.
As an evolutionary biologist I accept the first part of this statement. It is the last point that I have a difficulty in buying. This is because I am a full human (to the best of my knowledge) and am a knuckle walker. That is, my non-poluxal digits bend back at a 90 degree angle to my carpals and I can support my entire body weight on those. I started as a baby and can still do it. My baby did it as well, we 'crawled' with our hands not plantigrade (palms down) but as knuckle walkers. As an adoptee I don't know where this comes from but can trace to at least two generations. I find it hard to believe we are the only ones who do this. I am not in any way suggesting that the Baldwin family knuckle walking is the same mecahanism as is found in paninid primates, but I bet it is close. I am a firm believer in the idea that such traits are derived from gorilla/chimpanzee ancestry
Check out:
Richmond and Strait (Nature 404, 382-385 2000) "Bipedalism has traditionally been regarded as the fundamental adaptation that sets hominids apart from other primates. Fossil evidence demonstrates that by 4.1 million years ago, and perhaps earlier, hominids exhibited adaptations to bipedal walking. At present, however, the fossil record offers little information about the origin of bipedalism, and despite nearly a century of research on existing fossils and comparative anatomy, there is still no consensus concerning the mode of locomotion that preceded bipedalism. Here we present evidence that fossils attributed to Australopithecus anamensis (KNM-ER 20419) and A. afarensis (AL 288-1) retain specialized wrist morphology associated with knuckle-walking. This distal radial morphology differs from that of later hominids and non-knuckle-walking anthropoid primates, suggesting that knuckle-walking is a derived feature of the African ape and human clade. This removes key morphological evidence for a Pan—Gorilla clade, and suggests that bipedal hominids evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor that was already partly terrestrial."
So, Nothing, I am not an ape but I may look like one....
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