Robotics show Lucy walked upright

BBC:

Australopithecus afarensis, the early human who lived about 3.2 million years ago, walked upright, according to an "evolutionary robotics" model.

The model, which uses footprints to predict gait, suggests "Lucy", as the first fossil afarensis was called, walked rather like us.

This contradicts earlier suggestions that Lucy shuffled like a bipedally walking chimpanzee...

Some scientists maintain she was probably rather stooped and may have shuffled awkwardly, much like a modern chimp does when it is walking bipedally for short distances; while others think she was upright, routinely walking tall on two legs...

Now, a team of scientists from around the UK have used computer robotic techniques to work out the most energy efficient gait for afarensis based on Lucy's skeleton and the Laetoli footprint trails.

They claim to have cleared up the debate by finding that, based on their model, Lucy almost certainly did walk tall.

Here's the best part:

...[I]t doesn't end the argument because there is still the possibility that there were different creatures around at the time.

I would have thought since the science is so clear and definitive that the "shuffled awkwardly" group would have to be convinced. But it seems like they're just going to go on believing what they've always believed, with their usual, almost religious fervor...