Fig. 12.

Six ‘Baumuster’ (specializations), realized among hominoids: (a) the quadrupedal arborealist Proconsul; (b) chimpanzee, as representative of the African apes, generalist, adapted climber and quadrupedal walker with bipedal potential; (c) gibbon, highly specialized brachiator; (d) orang-utan and the similar Oreopithecus, slow climbers in trees, on the ground or on rigid, horizontal branches, bipedalists who use their arms for support; (e) Australopithecus, bipedal ground-dweller with high potential for climbing in trees; (f) Homo, highly specialized terrestrial bipedalist, not afraid of the third dimension, but not really gifted in using it.