Rita Sorrentino, Kristian J Carlson, Caley M Orr, Annalisa Pietrobelli, Carla Figus, Shuyuan Li, Michele Conconi, Nicola Sancisi, Claudio Belvedere, Mingjie Zhu, Luca Fiorenza, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Tea Jashashvili, Mario Novak, Biren A Patel, Thomas C Prang, Scott A Williams, Jaap P P Saers, Jay T Stock, Timothy Ryan, Mark Myerson, Alberto Leardini, Jeremy DeSilva, Damiano Marchi, Maria Giovanna Belcastro, Stefano Benazzi
The evolution of the medial longitudinal arch (MLA) is one of the most impactful adaptations in the hominin foot that emerged with bipedalism. When and how it evolved in the human lineage is still unresolved. Complicating the issue, clinical definitions of flatfoot in living Homo sapiens have not reached a consensus. Here we digitally investigate the navicular morphology of H. sapiens (living, archaeological, and fossil), great apes, and fossil hominins and its correlation with the MLA. A distinctive navicular shape characterises living H...
October 19, 2023: Communications Biology