To reply to a digest, insert the relevant message header; don't reply to the digest header ------------------------------------------------------------- The following article has just been published in Nature. Access to the full article is confined to subscribers (and I'm not one of them :-) I shall order a hard copy of the article through my library when it arrives over here (in Australia). In the meantinme, you will, I am sure, find the conclusion at odds with some of the Evolutionary Fitness asumptions and so worth further examination. (The only other serious support for a Paleo origin on distance running that I am aware of is that put forward by Paul Shepard in his 'Back to the Pleistocene') Endurance running and the evolution of Homo DENNIS M. BRAMBLE AND DANIEL E. LIEBERMAN Striding bipedalism is a key derived behaviour of hominids that possibly originated soon after the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages. Although bipedal gaits include walking and running, running is generally considered to have played no major role in human evolution because humans, like apes, are poor sprinters compared to most quadrupeds. Here we assess how well humans perform at sustained long-distance running, and review the physiological and anatomical bases of endurance running capabilities in humans and other mammals. Judged by several criteria, humans perform remarkably well at endurance running, thanks to a diverse array of features, many of which leave traces in the skeleton. The fossil evidence of these features suggests that endurance running is a derived capability of the genus Homo, originating about 2 million years ago, and may have been instrumental in the evolution of the human body form. Keith ----------------------------------------------------------------- The FAQ for Evolutionary Fitness is at http://www.evfit.com/faq.htm To unsubscribe from the list send an e-mail to [log in to unmask] with the words SIGNOFF EVOLUTIONARY-FITNESS in the _body_ of the e-mail.