article_snippet: Scientists have developed a new method of analysing long bones, such as the hallucal metatarsal - the shaft of the foot bone that links to the big toe - in order to study differences between the feet of humans and apes.
article_snippet: a new method of analysing long bones, such as the hallucal metatarsal - the shaft of the foot bone that links to the big toe - in order to study differences between the feet of humans and apes shows structural differences in different colours, as shown above .
article_snippet: An interdisciplinary team led by scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, has combined visualisation techniques, engineering principles and statistical analysis into a  new way of analysing the structure of long bones.
article_snippet: An interdisciplinary team led by scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa used combined visualisation techniques, engineering principles and statistical analysis to document foot differences between humans and apes, so that variations were highlighted in a rainbow of colours.
article_snippet: This work will be the starting point for future studies, which could investigate how far back in our evolutionary history the modern human pattern of bone structure in the hallucal metatarsal – the shaft of the foot bone that’s connected to the big toe - emerged.
article_snippet: As well as offering crucial evolutionary insights into the timing and appearance of modern human gait, As well as offering crucial evolutionary insights into the timing and appearance of modern human gait believe the method will advance the study of bone biology in hominin fossils.
article_snippet: Their method, which is described in the journal Plos One, allowed Their to detect differences in the shape and size of the bone in the modern species, by creating images from CT scans to make a ‘colour map’ where different qualities and properties of the bone are shown in different colours.
article_snippet: Dr Kristian Carlson explained: ‘the study of bone biology in hominin fossils is an exemplar proof-of-principle analysis for a technique that can advance the general fields of bone biology and functional morphology by introducing a powerful new means of analysing long bone shafts, particularly the general fields of bone biology and functional morphology structural properties.
article_snippet: In the study of bone biology in hominin fossils, our have documented exciting structural differences between humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, some of which were predictable based on some of which gait differences.
highlights_snippet: Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand developed a new technique to analyse the shape of bones in feet .
  
highlights_snippet: Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand have used Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand to show the structural differences between the feet of humans and apes in different colours, which may explain the way we walk .
  