Andrea Lukova

Andrea is studying the internal morphology of distal femur and proximal tibia using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) data of great apes, humans and fossil hominins to reconstruct locomotor diversity in the human lineage.
Prior to starting her PhD, Andrea completed a BSc in Social and Cultural and Biological Anthropology and MSc in Biological Anthropology at the University of West Bohemia, Czech republic. Her undergraduate dissertation was the comparison of the wrist transformations from apes to anatomically modern humans of the carpal region. Her Master thesis investigated trabecular bone tissue of the wrist bones in primates.
During her time at University of West Bohemia, she become a part of an international excavation project in Portugal of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic cave site Lapa do Picareiro (under cooperation between the University of West Bohemia, University of Louisville, University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Universidade do Algarve).  

Functional Morphology of the Hominin Knee: Implications for Locomotor Diversity in the Human Lineage

Investigation of internal bone structure, such as trabecular bone, has been shown to reveal in vivo locomotor behaviour of hominins and can offer unique insights into the behaviour of our ancestors.

Analysing trabecular bone of proximal femur and distal tibia has been proven to be rather challenging in the previous studies. However, knee is directly involved during locomotion and thus, we can test whether inner structure reflects differences in load (i.e., in load direction, magnitude, and frequency) associated with different knee positions during locomotion in humans and non-human apes. This study, for the first time, will test those differences in order to find correlations between inner anatomy and locomotion to provide a unique view to how the bipedalism could have evolved.  

Supervisors

• Professor Matthew Skinner
• Professor Tracy Kivell