To walk on two or four limbs, that is the question… Jeremy M. DeSilva an anthropologist at Worcester University in Massachusetts has published Functional Morphology of the Ankle and the Likelihood of Climbing in Early Hominins, in the peer-reviewed journal, Proceeding of the National Academies of Sciences of the USA current issue. The study includes data gathered by DeSilva in Uganda’s Kibale National Park of modern chimpanzee and comparisons of hominin fossil skeletal remains dating back some 4.12 million to 1.53 million years ago. The findings appear to show that if early hominins depended on tree climbing as part of their survival repertoire, they were performing it decidedly different from modern chimpanzee locomotor activity. The question DeSilva addresses is whether early man’s adaptation to full bipedalism involved a swift shedding of the ability to climb and swing from trees. DeSilva compared the great apes and early hominin ankle joint, the tibia and the talus in the foot. He discovered marked differences between the structure and capacity of these two skeletal fossils.