A new study has shown that early human ancestors walked upright on two legs about 7 million years ago. Based on recent bone analysis, an American team concluded that the Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which lived before humans, walked on two legs, confirming previous findings. Sahelanthropus tchadensis is generally considered the oldest known hominin, which lived between 6.7 and 7.2 million years ago, as the study published this week notes. After the discovery of a cranial bone and teeth in the Djurab Desert in northern Chad in 2001, researchers inferred from the point where the spine attaches to the skull that this hominin walked upright. Researchers classify humans and their extinct relatives as hominins. In 2022, scientists from France and Chad published their findings in the journal 'Nature' based on the examination of a humerus and a femur bone. The femur bone's structure indicates that these hominins usually moved on two legs on the ground but also traveled through trees.
