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Achilles tendon rupture
Published in Maneesh Bhatia, Essentials of Foot and Ankle Surgery, 2021
Manuel Monteagudo, Pilar Martínez de Albornoz
The human musculoskeletal system remains poorly adapted to bipedalism. We are demanding more and more from the Achilles tendon as we are challenged by sports at an older age. Additionally, the obesity rate has increased, and more people are engaging in high-impact activities. Collagen composition and mechanical properties of the tendon change with age, making the Achilles more prone to rupture. The poor vascular supply at the narrowest portion of the tendon also predisposes it to rupture. The incidence of Achilles tendon rupture has been steadily increasing over the last two decades, more commonly in men than women.
The Spontaneous Induction of Bone Formation by Intrinsically Osteoinductive Bioreactors for Human Patients
Published in Ugo Ripamonti, The Geometric Induction of Bone Formation, 2020
With the induction of skeletogenesis and body erection, locomotion was par force the next evolutionary step characterizing the emergence of the vertebrates and vertebrates’ speciation. Bipedalism and deambulation were hallmark steps in hominid’s evolution, controlling the emergence of Homo habilis and later of Homo erectus walking out of Africa, colonizing the planet’s landscape. Studies showed conserved gene families, including the remarkably conserved Hox transcription factor-dependent programme in ancient primitive marine vertebrates, the skate Leucoraja erinacea, at about 420,000 years before the present (Jung et al. 2018). Such skates share highly conserved neuronal circuitry that is essential for land deambulation (Jung et al. 2018). The communication by Jung et al. (2018) has indicated that circuitry that is essential for walking “evolved through adaptation of a genetic regulatory network shared by all vertebrates with paired appendages” capable thus of locomotion (Jung et al. 2018).
Changing Circumstances and Diets
Published in Christopher Cumo, Ancestral Diets and Nutrition, 2020
Accumulation of fossils fingers bipedalism as the adaptation that distinguished our lineage from other primates. This innovation appears to have arisen roughly 6 million years ago, some 4 million years before the brain’s enlargement.23 Bipedalism must confer advantages; otherwise competition for resources should have exterminated its possessors. That extinction has claimed all but one biped—H. sapiens—warns against exaggerating its advantages. Nonetheless, since the nineteenth century, naturalists, anthropologists, and biologists have labored to detail how upright carriage benefitted our lineage.
Walking with hominins: from the reconstruction of a plausible anatomical model to gait energetics in Neandertals. Methodological aspects
Published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 2019
J. Duveau, F. Multon, F. Marchal, D. Anduze, G. Berillon
Bipedalism as preferential locomotor mode is considered essential in the hominins’ phylogenetic history (e.g., Darwin 1871; Harcourt-Smith and Aiello 2004; Fleagle and Lieberman 2015). However, simulating the locomotion of fossil species is usually a difficult challenge. On the one hand, as motion data are no accessible and soft tissues are not kept in the fossil record, functional inferences can only be based on osteological characteristics, such as body proportions, joint angles or the relative thickness of cortical bone (e.g., Lovejoy and Trinkaus 1980; Holliday 1997; Steudel-Numbers and Tilkens 2004; Ruff 2009). On the other hand, fossil osteological assemblages are most of the time very fragmentary (e.g., Wood and Lonergan 2008; Richmond and Hatala 2013), which complicates such inferences. Nevertheless, some fossil human taxa, such as Neandertals, appear sufficiently complete in order to undertake reliable biomechanical analyses of the musculoskeletal system (e.g., Chapman et al. 2010).
Comparative functional anatomy using rigid multibody simulation and anatomical transfer: Homo sapiens, Pan paniscus and Papio anubis
Published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 2019
A. Perrier, M. Bucki, A. Supiot, N. Delcroix, F. Lamberton, F. Druelle, A. Herrel, G. Berillon
For many years, bipedal locomotion has been considered to be one of the main characteristics of the evolution of the Homo genus. However, this locomotor mode is not human specific. In fact, it is certainly occasionally performed in all non-human primates. Nevertheless, in humans, the erected bipedal gait is unique and is characterized by a succession of phases of single and double support using 3 rockers. The foot is an important interface with the ground that allows this unique bipedal style. In Homo sapiens, the (bipedal) anatomy is thus very specialized and different from that of other hominids. For instance, the bonobo, Pan paniscus, is our closest relative and walk bipedally occasionally, yet it does not have an developed Achilles tendon as in Homo sapiens. The baboon, Papio anubis, is a non-hominoid primate capable of occasional bipedalism as well, yet, contrary to bonobos, it has an Achilles tendon which is anatomically similar to the one of Homo sapiens. Comparative structural anatomy is used to infer differences between species.Foot bones are commonly used, but the structural analysis does not always reflect the functional abilities. For this purpose, comparative anatomy can focus on muscles, Biomechanical modelling and in particular the rigid multi-body method makes it possible to create prototypes of the foot that can be activated in direct dynamics. Anatomical transfer algorithms enable to simulate, using bone information only, the feet of different individuals by transferring the muscles and ligaments from an Atlas model.
An overview of sex and reproductive immunity from an evolutionary/anthropological perspective
Published in Immunological Medicine, 2021
Yoshihiko Araki, Hiroshi Yoshitake, Kenji Yamatoya, Hiroshi Fujiwara
Some people believe that bipedalism may have been the deciding factor in the development of the human brain. Bipedalism put less strain on the neck and allowed for the use of both hands. This may have contributed to the development of the human brain by making it possible to do heavy labor, such as agricultural work. There are many theories concerning the significance of human bipedalism. Relatively recent theories indicate that it stems from our ancestors’ unique arboreal lifestyle, which was different from that of orangutans and gorillas [10,11]. This suggests that humans have evolved uniquely among apes and may be related to the fact that we are the only species in need of midwifery.