More on Dikika girl.

Despite the evolutionary slant put on the find of Dikika girl by the popular media, this latest find instead provides strong evidence that Lucy and her kind were in fact apes and not some ancestor of human beings...the study also found that the once fluid filled semicircular canals of the inner ear were distinctly like that of the chimpanzee, and not like a human at all. As these canals are crucial for balance, it therefore demonstrates that Dikika girl was more at home in the trees than on the ground, and therefore bipedal locomotion would not have been the norm. The means of locomotion on the ground of Australopithecus afarensis would have been much closer to that of an ape than human being.

When this evidence is added together it shows that it in many important respects Dikika girl and the Australopithecus afarensis species as a whole should now be considered to be typical of apes and not a transitional form. Although in previous finds the shape of the pelvis has indicated some morphology that is different from modern apes, the presence of an ape-like semi-circular canal and general upper body shape demonstrates that the means of locomotion of Australopithecus afarensis is more ape-like than previously claimed. Dikika girl provides strong evidence that Australopithecus afarensis should now be identified as a species of ape.
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