Danuvius and the walking ape
An eleven-million-year-old Bavarian ape has limbs suited to walking upright along branches.
- When
- Known to
- ± 200 thousand years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Danuvius guggenmosi, described in 2019 from a Bavarian clay pit, preserves limb bones indicating a combination not seen before: hind limbs capable of extension for weight-bearing, and long powerful arms for hanging. Its describers called the resulting locomotion extended limb clambering and argued that upright posture arose in the trees, long before any hominin walked on the ground. The claim is contested, but it changed the terms of the argument about where bipedalism comes from.