Ancient hominin Lucy was a lousy runner, simulations show

Lucy, the fossil hominin who lived around 3.2 million years ago, would have been no match for modern humans in a running race.

Even an average member of our species would have left her for dead in a 100-metre sprint, and the current world record holder for this distance, Usain Bolt, would have beaten Lucy by somewhere between 50 and 80 metres.

Karl Bates at the University of Liverpool in the UK and his colleagues have, for the first time, attempted to determine how fast Lucy’s species, …