Spondylolysis and spinal adaptations for bipedalism

The study reported here focused on the aetiology of spondylolysis, a vertebral pathology usually caused by a fatigue fracture. The goal was to test the Overshoot Hypothesis, which proposes that people develop spondylolysis because their vertebral shape is at the highly derived end of the range of variation within Homo sapiens.We recorded 3D data on the final lumbar vertebrae of H. sapiens and three great ape species, and performed three...