Climbing, brachiation, and terrestrial quadrupedalism: historical precursors of hominid bipedalism

Abstract

The vertical-climbing account of the evolution of locomotor behavior and morphology in hominid ancestry is reexamined in light of recent behavioral, anatomical, and paleontological findings and a more firmly established phylogeny for the living apes. The behavioral record shows that African apes, when arboreal, are good vertical climbers, and that locomotion during traveling best separates the living apes into brachiators (gibbons), scrambling/ climbing/brachiators (orangutans), and terrestrial quadrupeds (gorillas and chimpanzees). The paleontological record documents frequent climbing as an ancestral catarrhine ability, while a reassessment of the morphology of the torso and forelimb in living apes and Atelini suggests that their shared unique morphological pattern is best explained by brachiation and forelimb suspensory positional behavior. Further, evidence from the hand and foot points to a terrestrial quadrupedal phase in hominoid evolution prior to the adoption of bipedalism. The evolution of positional behavior from early hominoids to hominids appears to have begun with an arboreal quadrupedal-climbing phase and proceeded though an orthograde, brachiating, forelimb-suspensory phase, which was in turn followed by arboreal and terrestrial quadrupedal phases prior to the advent of hominid bipedality. The thesis that protohominids climbed down from the trees to become terrestrial bipeds needs to be reexamined in light of a potentially long history of terrestriality in the ancestral protohominid.