Episode 5: Throwing in Human Evolution

Past Time

Humans are weird animals. We walk around on two legs, we have big brains...and we like to throw things at each other. Did all this happen in a gradual march to Homo sapiens? In this episode of Past Time, Adam and Matt talk to Dr. Susan Larson, an expert on the anatomy of living and extinct apes. Dr. Larson and Matt will try to convince Adam that mammalian and primate evolution is actually pretty interesting stuff. Dr. Larson's research introduced new wrinkles to the smoth transition from a chimp-like ancestor to us. Her work shows our close bipedal ancestors - like "Lucy" the Australopithecus and "Turkana Boy" the Homo erectus/Homo ergaster - had very different shoulder blades than ours that limited their ability to rotate their arms. This arrangement would have made throwing difficult for Homo erectus and you would have left him on the bench for the playoffs. The evolution of pitching in recent human ancestors shaped our modern anatomy and is part of what makes us human!