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Did knuckle walking evolve twice?

M Dainton1, G A Macho

  • 1Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology, The University of Liverpool, UK. mdainton@liverpool.ac.uk

Journal of Human Evolution
|March 6, 1999
PubMed
Summary

Knuckle walking in African apes likely evolved in parallel, not from a common ancestor. Differences in wrist bone growth and adult proportions suggest distinct evolutionary paths for chimpanzees and gorillas.

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Area of Science:

  • Primate evolutionary biology
  • Comparative anatomy
  • Paleoanthropology

Background:

  • African great apes (chimpanzees and gorillas) exhibit similar quadrupedal locomotion but have distinct hand morphologies.
  • The evolutionary origin of knuckle walking, whether from a common ancestor or through parallel evolution, remains debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the ontogenetic scaling and adult proportions of carpal bones in chimpanzees (Pan) and gorillas (Gorilla).
  • To determine if observed morphological differences are attributable to developmental trajectories or behavioral adaptations in knuckle walking.

Main Methods:

  • A morphometric analysis of 27 dimensions of the lunate, triquetral, hamate, and capitate bones in sub-adult and adult chimpanzees and gorillas.
  • Comparative analysis of growth trajectories and adult proportions using reduced major axis (RMA) regressions.

Main Results:

  • Only 56% of carpal dimensions showed ontogenetic scaling in sub-adults, with some dimensions exhibiting different adult proportions between species.
  • Two main growth patterns were observed: shared trajectories (Pattern A) and transposed regressions (Pattern B), with gorillas showing earlier cessation of carpal growth.
  • While some differences, particularly in the lunate, correlate with behavioral variations, most suggest heterochronic developmental modifications.

Conclusions:

  • Carpal morphology differences between chimpanzees and gorillas are largely due to heterochronic modifications in developmental timing, not solely behavioral adaptations.
  • The findings support the hypothesis that knuckle walking evolved in parallel in the chimpanzee and gorilla lineages.
  • This study contributes to understanding the evolutionary divergence of locomotion and morphology in African great apes.

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