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Researchers: Supernova prompted humans to walk upright

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supernova/NASA

You have to admit, supernovas are cool. And humans are the only primate that always walks on two legs if possible. That is, we don’t drop down onto our hands and feet when we “really” need to run. All serious races are bipedal because we are fully committed to bipedalism.

In this version, bipedalism started with an avalanche of electrons:

A paper published today in the Journal of Geology makes the case: Supernovae bombarded Earth with cosmic energy starting as many as 8 million years ago, with a peak some 2.6 million years ago, initiating an avalanche of electrons in the lower atmosphere and setting off a chain of events that feasibly ended with bipedal hominins such as homo habilis, dubbed “handy man.”

The authors believe atmospheric ionization probably triggered an enormous upsurge in cloud-to-ground lightning strikes that ignited forest fires around the globe. These infernos could be one reason ancestors of homo sapiens developed bipedalism — to adapt in savannas that replaced torched forests in northeast Africa…

“The observation is that there’s a lot more charcoal and soot in the world starting a few million years ago,” Melott said. “It’s all over the place, and nobody has any explanation for why it would have happened all over the world in different climate zones. This could be an explanation. That increase in fires is thought to have stimulated the transition from woodland to savanna in a lot of places — where you had forests, now you had mostly open grassland with shrubby things here and there. That’s thought to be related to human evolution in northeast Africa. Specifically, in the Great Rift Valley where you get all these hominin fossils.” University of Kansas, “Researchers wonder if ancient supernovae prompted human ancestors to walk upright” at Eurekalert

Funny, if bipedalism originated in a global catastrophe, that it never occurred to any other primate to resolve the problem by becoming fully bipedal. But keep thinking. Resist groupthink.

See also: Bipedalsm: Regulatory area cent.com/intelligent-design/bipedalism-regulatory-area-missing-in-humans/” target=”another”>missing in humans

Researcher: To Understand Human Bipedalism, Stop Assuming “A Chimpanzee Starting Point”

Rough terrain caused humans to start walking upright

Early bipedalism walked no straight line

We’ve also heard that bipedalism developed so we could hit each other. Or carry infants. Or scarce resources. Or save energy. Or cool down. But mainly so we could have our hands free for whatever. (Saving eneregy and cooling down don’t really count here because lots of other methods would have worked; they just wouldn’t have freed the hands at the same time.)

See also “I’m Walkin’, Yes Indeed I’m Walkin’” But Not Because It’s Necessarily a Better Way to Get Around

Also, Design perspectives and the physiology of walking

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Comments
> such as homo habilis, dubbed “handy man.” What the...???...my wife calls me that!EDTA
May 29, 2019
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Well, yeah, a guy's gotta get his NEXT handout of free Grant money SOMEHOW. If the Design ain't already set up to go full 2-legged, then clearly you don't get any advantages from an incremental bastardization. Humans were simply ALWAYS bipedal, kinda like motorcycles are NOT modified automobiles. I think it's Berlinski who in one of his recorded lectures says that he GAVE UP trying to figure out how many specific change you had to make to a bear to turn him into a whale when he hit 50,000?!! individual changes. And of course the half-baked version performs WORSE than the original at EVERY SINGLE STEP. Can't we just lock these idiots up in chicken coops or something and throw money over the fence every year or 2? They're "work" is less than worthless to us on the outside.vmahuna
May 29, 2019
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