Endurance running and the evolution of Homo

Dennis M. Bramble () and Daniel E. Lieberman ()
Additional contact information
Dennis M. Bramble: University of Utah
Daniel E. Lieberman: Harvard University

Nature, 2004, vol. 432, issue 7015, 345-352

Abstract: Abstract Striding bipedalism is a key derived behaviour of hominids that possibly originated soon after the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages. Although bipedal gaits include walking and running, running is generally considered to have played no major role in human evolution because humans, like apes, are poor sprinters compared to most quadrupeds. Here we assess how well humans perform at sustained long-distance running, and review the physiological and anatomical bases of endurance running capabilities in humans and other mammals. Judged by several criteria, humans perform remarkably well at endurance running, thanks to a diverse array of features, many of which leave traces in the skeleton. The fossil evidence of these features suggests that endurance running is a derived capability of the genus Homo, originating about 2 million years ago, and may have been instrumental in the evolution of the human body form.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03052 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:432:y:2004:i:7015:d:10.1038_nature03052

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature03052

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().