I'm doing an open courseware initiative with my introductory course, Principles of Biological Anthropology. I have set up the course very differently than most introductory courses in evolution. Each lecture is centered around a part of the body, giving a perspective on its evolution in hominins, the genetics underlying its variation in humans, and how we compare to other kinds of primates. This is the first lecture I'm posting to the front page of the weblog, but it is the second lecture in the course. The first lecture, which is mainly devoted to introducing the course requirements and syllabus for enrolled students, is also available online for those who may be interested.
Putting the lectures online is a true experiment for me. It is already proving to be valuable for the students enrolled here in the course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. By making the materials open, I hope that many people outside the university may also find them useful. The course schedule and other materials, including the lab assignments and readings, are online at the course webpage. They are a work in progress, as always in my courses, and run a week or two ahead of the dates indicated.
The topic of this lecture is "Feet". The lecture covers the gross anatomical differences among the feet of different great apes and humans, the evidence for bipedality in Australopithecus afarensis focusing on metatarsal anatomy and the Laetoli footprints, some details about the feet of Australopithecus sediba, which show an interesting mosaic of anatomy, the foot anatomy of Ardipithecus ramidus, and evidence for footwear in Upper Paleolithic humans based on reduction of the lateral toes. The overarching concepts reviewed in the lecture are phylogeny and the idea that different lineages may arrive at different solutions for common evolutionary problems.
The university's streaming solution uses a Flash player that I have embedded here. This solution does not work on all devices (in particular, tablets and phones) and I apologize if those are your preferred browsing medium. I'm still investigating options to make the lectures more broadly available.
- How would you investigate the differences in the feet of people today to understand the functional consequences of their variation?
- What would you expect the ancestor of great apes to look like, in terms of its foot anatomy?
- Why do you hypothesize that gibbon feet and orangutan feet appear so different in their anatomy?
- Do you expect other early hominin fossils to have similar foot anatomy to A. afarensis?