The long arm and short legs wars
- Wits University
Professor Lee Berger explores the origins of the this great debate and examines the arguments of the terrestrialists and the arborealists.
For decades a war raged within the field of palaeoanthropology. At the center of the battle were some of the most important fossils hominids ever discovered, the fossils from Hadar in Ethiopia, and included the famous Lucy fossil. The question was, did hominids climb, or was their adaptation to bipedalism so complete as to preclude arboreal behaviours. Lee Berger found himself caught up in this war shortly after finishing his Ph.D. in the early 1990’s. In this lecture Berger explores the origins of the this great debate and examines the arguments of the terrestrialists and the arborealists, and we find who won the Long Arm and Short Legs fossil wars.