The human foot is a unique and defining characteristic of our anatomy.
Most primates have grasping, prehensile feet, whereas the human foot
stands out as a powerful non-grasping propulsive lever that is central
to our evolution as adept bipedal walkers and runners and defines our
lineage. Very few books have compiled and evaluated key research on the
primate foot and provided a perspective on what we know and what we
still need to know. This book serves as an essential companion to "The
Evolution of the Primate Hand" volume, also in the Developments in
Primatology series. This book includes chapters written by experts in
the field of morphology and mechanics of the primate foot, the role of
the foot in different aspects of primate locomotion (including but not
limited to human bipedalism), the "hard evidence" of primate foot
evolution including fossil foot bones and fossil footprints, and the
relevance of our foot's evolutionary history to modern human foot
pathology.
This volume addresses three fundamental questions:
(1) What makes the human foot so different from that of other primates?
(2) How does the anatomy, biomechanics, and ecological context of the
foot and foot use differ among primates and why? (3) how did foot
anatomy and function change throughout primate and human evolution, and
why is this evolutionary history relevant in clinical contexts today?
This co-edited volume, which relies on the insights of leading scholars
in primate foot anatomy and evolution provides for the first time a
comprehensive review and scholarly discussion of the primate foot from
multiple perspectives. It is accessible to readers at different levels
of inquiry (e.g., undergraduate/graduate students, postdoctoral
research, other scholars outside of biological anthropology). This
volume provides an all-in‐one resource for research on the comparative
and functional morphology and evolution of the primate foot.
