Australopithecus afarensis, the early human who lived about 3.2 million years ago, walked upright, according to an "evolutionary robotics" model. The model, which uses footprints to predict gait, suggests "Lucy", as the first fossil afarensis was called, walked rather like us. This contradicts earlier suggestions that Lucy shuffled like a bipedally walking chimpanzee. The research is published in the Royal Society Interface journal. "I think it is very interesting work," Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, told the BBC News website. "There was controversy as to whether [footprints purported to be from afarensis] were showing a human pattern. And it looks like they do." Lucy was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, by a team of paleoanthropologists who were fans of the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The ancient hominid had many features reminiscent of her early ape ancestry, but she also carried hints of her future descendents. Her jaw was protruding and her forehead sloped back. But she seemed human, too; her posture being more upright than that of a chimpanzee. However, there has been a debate about how "human" Lucy's posture actually was. Some scientists maintain she was probably rather stooped and may have shuffled awkwardly, much like a modern chimp does when it is walking bipedally for short distances; while others think she was upright, routinely walking tall on two legs.
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