The last ancestor that we shared with apes had its own set of traits, and was different from both us and modern apes.
In The Descent of Man,
Bottom-up - uses the fossil record of both humans and apes; it shows multiple possibilities both for what the LCA looked like, and where he roamed. In an attempt to reconcile these approaches to identifying our ancient ancestor, the scientists looked at what the environment must have been like for the Pan-Homo last common ancestor, or LCA.
During the late Miocene period in Africa, increased habitat fragmentation may have led to the evolution of African ape knuckle-walking, and hominin bipedalism, or walking on two feet, from a common orthograde ancestor who lived in the trees. Walking on two feet might have allowed our human ancestors to adapt their diets and locomotion, and escape the “specialization trap” that kept other apes in an arboreal environment.
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