There was a busy start to 2023 with two new papers published!
Paper 1: We started off the year with our publication on quantitative biomechanics of the Euparkeria capensis pelvis and hindlimb – this is a Middle Triassic critter which may or may not have walked bipedally. We tested the pitch of this critter to establish if it could have maintained an erect posture, or if the pitch (i.e., downwards momentum) would have been too much and thus it could only have walked on all four legs (quadrupedalism).
We used musculoskeletal models and static simulations (i.e., a singular pose, no movement was modelled) to test the influence of body posture on locomotor potential. We show that the resulting negative pitching moments around the centre of mass were prohibitive for sustainable bipedality and thus conclude that it was unlikely that Euparkeria was facultatively bipedal, and was probably quadrupedal, rendering the inference of ancestral bipedal abilities in Archosauria unlikely.
Paper 2: Our next paper was published last month in The Journal of Experimental Biology as part of an invited review to celebrate ‘100 years of discovery’! The paper titled Modern three-dimensional digital methods for studying locomotor biomechanics in tetrapods provides an overview of modern 3D methods to investigate locomotion in tetrapods, ranging from discussions of inverse kinematics to robotics to finite element analysis! Check it out here!
The Walking Hominins 