Dr. Ashleigh Wiseman has managed to digitally reconstruct leg and pelvic muscles of AL 2881, the fossilized remains of a female Australopithecus afarensis hominin who lived over three million years ago and is popularly known simply as “Lucy.”
Wiseman’s study, the results of which were published last week, resulted in the reconstruction of 36 muscles in each of Lucy’s legs, with these muscles appearing to be much larger than those of modern humans.
“We are now the only animal that can stand upright with straight knees. Lucy’s muscles suggest that she was as proficient at bipedalism as we are, while possibly also being at home in the trees. Lucy likely walked and moved in a way that we do not see in any living species today,” Wiseman said as quoted in a release by the University of Cambridge.
The researcher also postulated that the approach adopted for this study is effective in “reconstructing muscle volumes in extinct hominis for which musculature is unknown.”