They have found a foot bone that goes with the skeleton of Lucy, a 3 million year-old Australopithecus afarensis. The Star Tribune reports that this bone shows that Australopithecus afarensis could walk on the ground and were bipedal like humans now.
Carol Ward told Fox News that they knew she was bipedal but there was some debate over how much she was versatile in the trees. Conclusions are that if they climbed trees, they were no better at it than we are today.
Another human origins expert told Fox News that he doesn't agree with those conclusions. He said that other bones of Lucy point to a combination of tree climbing and ground walking.
According to the Star Tribune, the new bone was discovered with other A. afarensis bones at Hadar, Ethiopia. It is called a metatarsal, which is "one of the long bones connecting the toes to the base of the foot."
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