Primate Anatomy, Locomotion, and Ecology On the Savanna (PALEOS)

With Prof. Tracy Kivell and PhD student Rhianna Drummond-Clarke, we are investigating how Issa's primates can inform our understanding of human origins. In the absence of direct fossil evidence, extant chimpanzees that live in a savanna habitat analogous to that of early hominins (savanna woodland, mosaic landscapes, hereafter “savanna-mosaic”) provide ideal models to test the “savanna effect” on ape (locomotor and ecological) behaviour. Investigations to date, however, have focused on forest-dwelling communities, limiting our knowledge of the full range of chimpanzee behavior and its application for modelling hominin evolution. A key aim of this collaboration is to address questions of how a semi-arboreal, large-bodied ape interacts with its savanna-mosaic habitat and possible ecological drivers of hominin traits, with a focus on positional (locomotion + posture) behaviour and bipedalism, hand-use, cranial-dental morphology and diet, postcranial morphology, and foraging ecology.

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The first paper to emerge out of this collaboration revealed unexpected results about chimpanzee postural behaviour, terrestriality, and bipedalism. Read it here!

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