“This is a chicken embryo,” says Snyder, a bioengineer at Colossal Biosciences in Dallas, as he gently places the device cradling the chicken embryo into a stand that makes it glow. “You can see the little chicken embryos moving around in there,” Snyder says. “You can see it has eyes. It has a heartbeat. It has a beak. It has feathers. It has an eyelid. You can see the wings are developing. Legs. It even is beginning to get little claws on its feet.”
The ilium is the big, flared part of the pelvis that anchors the powerful gluteus maximus muscles that humans use to stay upright. Differences in the illum between humans and other apes are a defining evolutionary difference. "The most important impact of the paper is that it shows us how changes to the formation of the ilium contributed to bipedal gait in humans," said Prof Nowlan, who began this research after meeting Dr Terence Capellini, a Harvard University anthropologist, at a scientific meeting.