The analysis offers a detailed snapshot of the hominin's running speed and the muscular adaptations that enabled modern humans to run long distances.
Bates and his colleagues created a 3D digital model of the 'Lucy' skeleton... to estimate the ancient hominin's muscle mass.
The simulations showed that Lucy could run on two legs, despite lacking the lengthened Achilles tendon and shortened muscle fibres that are thought to benefit endurance running in modern humans.
Even when the researchers removed body size from their modelling, Lucy's running still lagged behind that of modern humans, suggesting that her phylogeny limits running speed.
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