Title: Using Musculoskeletal Modeling to Study Human Bipedalism Evolution

Speaker: Brian Umberger, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Time: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time

Registration: https://simtk.webex.com/simtk/onstage/g.php?MTID=eb732db0fbff8c06ed46355...

DESCRIPTION

Modern humans are unique among mammals in habitually walking upright on two relatively straight legs. The transition to habitual bipedalism, beginning around 7 million years ago, involved substantial changes in the postcranial anatomy of our early human ancestors. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and possess many anatomical features that are found in the fossil hominin record. Thus, there has been considerable interest in how chimpanzee bipedal walking compares with that of modern humans. As part of a multi-faceted project on the evolution of bipedalism in the human lineage, we have developed an OpenSim musculoskeletal model of the chimpanzee pelvis and hind limb. In this webinar, we will describe the development and validation of the chimpanzee model, highlighting important differences with modern human locomotor anatomy. We will finish by briefly describing current applications of the model focused on better understanding the roles of skeletal morphology on locomotion from an evolutionary perspective.

Sponsors:

The OpenSim Project and the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research (NCSRR) at Stanford.

http://opensim.stanford.edu/support/event_details.html?id=177