As a foot and ankle evolution specialist, I utilize large datasets to more fully understand the scope of human foot and ankle anatomical variation. I derive these data from skeletons, in vivo medical images such as x-rays, and from cadavers. Then I attempt to figure out how our ancient ancestors’ feet and ankles functioned given what we know about modern humans.
I am a member of the Rising Star team. Our work on Homo naledi was published in the open access journal eLife. Here are the species diagnosis paper and the site formation paper. We’ve also published a paper on the foot and ankle of Homo naledi, and continue to develop our understanding of these fascinating ancient hominins. The gait team presented our preliminary thoughts on how Homo naledi walked at the 2016 AAPA Meeting in Atlanta: Homo naledi strides again PDF. At the 2017 AAPA Meeting in New Orleans, we presented our analysis of Homo naledi‘s pedal pathologies (PDF).