Laboratory of Physical Anthropology, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 31;8(1):1930. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-20410-4.
Inferring the morphology of the last common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas is a matter of ongoing debate. Recent findings and reassessment of fossil hominins leads to the hypothesis that the last common ancestor was not extant African ape-like. However, an African great-ape-like ancestor with knuckle walking features still remains plausible and the most parsimonious scenario. Here we address this question via an evolutionary developmental approach, comparing taxon-specific patterns of shape change of the femoral diaphysis from birth to adulthood in great apes, humans, and macaques. While chimpanzees and gorillas exhibit similar locomotor behaviors, our data provide evidence for distinct ontogenetic trajectories, indicating independent evolutionary histories of femoral ontogeny. Our data further indicate that anthropoid primates share a basic pattern of femoral diaphyseal ontogeny that reflects shared developmental constraints. Humans escaped from these constraints via differential elongation of femur.
推断人类、黑猩猩和大猩猩的最后共同祖先的形态是一个持续争论的问题。最近的发现和对古人类化石的重新评估导致了这样一种假设，即最后共同祖先是不存在的类人猿状非洲猿。然而，具有节肢行走特征的非洲大型猿类祖先仍然是合理的，也是最简约的情况。在这里，我们通过进化发育的方法来解决这个问题，比较了大型猿类、人类和猕猴的股骨骨干从出生到成年的形态变化的分类特异性模式。虽然黑猩猩和大猩猩表现出相似的运动行为，但我们的数据提供了证据，表明它们具有不同的个体发育轨迹，表明股骨个体发生的进化历史是独立的。我们的数据进一步表明，灵长类动物具有基本的股骨骨干个体发生模式，反映了共同的发育限制。人类通过股骨的差异伸长从这些限制中逃脱出来。
