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Showing posts from August, 2014

Evolution of bipedal running

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Awesome lizard shot by Simon Pynt  which sadly the journal did not want on its cover  This week my paper on the evolution of bipedalism came out in the journal Evolution. This work is part of a long ongoing project understanding why these lizards sometimes run on two legs and sometimes run on four, and why Australian agamid lizards in particular seem to be so very good at the former. But to understand this we need a little bit of background into Bipedalism and why lizards are so weird. Awesome picture of a dinosaur I stole from the web. To make this blog post look cooler.     Bipedalism (running on two legs) evolved independently many times, for example in hopping marsupials (like kangaroos), hopping placentals (like kangaroo rats), primates (like us), birds, dinosaurs, lizards, insects, and this awesome octopus ! In birds, primates and dinosaurs the forelimbs appear to be used for something else so bipedalism makes sense, and hopping on two legs can save energy