Interesting details suggest that the evolution of a tiny knee bone — the lateral fabella — could have influenced how our ancestors moved from walking on four legs to two.
The Enigmatic Fabella
The lateral fabella is a tiny, sesame seed-sized bone that has intrigued researchers studying primate evolution. A new study reveals that this bone, which is present in the knee of many animals (human as well as other primates), underwent a different evolutionary path in our ancestors.
The new research, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, digs deeper into this small but fascinating bone. In a new study, researchers at King’s College London set out to understand what the lateral fabella might tell us across 93 primate species. Although they are present in most primates, this set of bones is either missing or reduced to vestigial nubs in hominoids — a group that includes humans and other great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas) and lesser apes (gibbons).
Separating the Evolution of the Fabella
Humans also possess this bone in a unique way compared to most other primates—a finding that represents one of the biggest surprises. In primates fabellae allusively grow in pairs- medial and lateral; however, there is a rare case among humans where they only develop the lateral fabella [8].
The evolution of the fabella in humans along this unique evolutionary trajectory might reflect a change that allowed the immediate ancestors of humans to adapt to bipedalism. ‘The bones could therefore have been prepared for use in bipedalism and come to be used at the neck because of similar stress.’Dr Michael Berthaume, lead author on the study, said: ‘Excitingly this decoupling might be a sign of exaptation – where evolution co-opts a trait for new purposes.
Researchers think it may have helped humans to walk upright how they did not evolve to form the medial fabella as well alongside the lateral fabella This evolutionary change may thus have conferred a biomechanical advantage to our predecessors when transitioning from quadripedal to bipedal locomotion.
Conclusion
ConclusionThe evolution of the lateral fabella in humans is a great example on how small, seemingly unimportant differences in the body can have far-reaching consequences related to locomotion and adaptation to our environment. Overall, this research helps security up the complex and intricately tied publishes separate to our forefathers/machines/sans machines that ultimately provided us with thence if only we could just stand upright and kind of out walking. Further investigation of the biomechanics and evolutionary narrative behind fabellae in humans may provide deeper insights into the extraordinary story of human evolution.
