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Nature 404, 339-340 (23 March 2000) | doi:10.1038/35006181

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Human evolution: From forelimbs to two legs

Mark Collard1 & Leslie C. Aiello1

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A reanalysis of the wrist bones of early human fossils provides the first good evidence that humans evolved from ancestors who 'knuckle-walked', as chimps and gorillas do today.

Most people think that palaeoanthropologists spend their lives in exotic places prospecting for fossils. Not so — researchers working on human evolution generally spend most of their time in the laboratory seeking new ways of testing ideas about the existing fossil record.

  1. Mark Collard and Leslie C. Aiello are in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.

Correspondence to: Mark Collard1 e-mails: Email: m.collard@ucl.ac.uk

Correspondence to: Leslie C. Aiello1 Email: l.aiello@ucl.ac.uk