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San Clemente Company Plays Key Role in Search for Missing Link
 Vol. 4, Issue 45, November 5–11, 2009
By Katherine Sweet
San Clemente Times
San Clemente’s LifeModeler plays key role in evolutionary discovery, ‘Ardi’
Over the ages, scientists have attempted to shed light on that age-old evolutionary question: Where do we come from? To help provide an answer to this mystery, researchers partnered with LifeModeler, a San Clemente-based company that specializes in replicating human movement with computers. Using LifeModeler’s sophisticated computer software in a quest to discover when and why bipedalism evolved, the company was able to reconstruct how one of our theorized ancient ancestors, a 4.4 million-year-old hominid named Ardipithecus ramidus, or “Ardi,” would have walked and moved.
Ardi, a 110-pound, 4-foot female, was discovered more than 15 years ago in the Ethiopian desert. Ardi supplanted “Lucy,” a 3.2 million-year-old female hominid known as Australopithecus afarensi, as the oldest hominid so far discovered, pre-dating her by around a million years.
One of the main differences between Ardi and other fossil discoveries is that Ardi has an articulated big toe – a big toe that functions similar to a human’s thumb. Ardi would therefore been able to grasp a branch using just her foot – a completely unprecedented feat that has no living analogue.
Her pelvis indicates that she walked upright, or was “bipedal,” – which is thought to be the defining characteristics of being human. While monkeys and apes today walk on their knuckles, Ardi did not – meaning she represents a crucial evolutionary phase. In fact, Ardi is unique: She is the only ancestor in the human lineage who had an articulated big toe and who walked upright. Ardi, described as a mosaic of chimpanzee and human, can possibly disprove the idea that humans evolved from an ancient, chimp-like creature.
“Ardi is not chimp, not human, but what we used to be,” Tim White, project coordinator, said.
According to LifeModeler CEO and founder Shawn McGuan, the project’s biologist, C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University, wanted to understand how a foot could both grasp a branch and walk
efficiently. That’s where LifeModeler entered.
LifeModeler develops software that simulates the human body and how it moves – in detail – on the computer. The company was started in San Clemente in 2002 and is a pioneer in the field. It employs scientists all over the country in developing biomechanics software and applying that software to areas such as medicine, sports and space. The software can be put to a variety of uses, such as designing knee and hip replacements or improving athletic performance.
Using LifeModeler’s software, it is possible to look at a complicated motion, such as a golf swing, and re-create it with a biomechanics simulation model – generating vast amount of data. This software was therefore able to see how Ardi would have walked based on models of her bones.
McGuan, Scott Bergeon and others at LifeModeler teamed with Lovejoy to create 3-D visualizations of Ardi’s bones – visualizations that could be put to use in understanding how Ardi walked. Hearing of their fame in the field, Lovejoy came to LifeModeler around a year ago with “a handful of bones.”
“We took the ideas Owen had in his head, based on the bones,” said Bergeon, tech specialist and product manager at LifeModeler. “We helped put them in the model, then adjusted the vision.”
The computer models of the bones were put together, muscles added, and then used to simulate the ways that Ardi moved. From there, the researchers were able to do a thorough analysis.
“The science part came from Owen,” Bergeon said. “We brought the visualization of his ideas.”
The big challenge was morphing the human skeleton into Ardi’s skeleton. This was a time-consuming process, lasting three months simply to create the model.
“We have lots of experience working with the human body,” McGuan said, “but Ardi was very different.”
After building a complete body model of Ardi, the team morphed the body of a stuntwoman to Ardi’s actual shape. With a stuntwoman approximately Ardi’s size as a live human model, through motion capture, the team was able to take data from the motion of this model, who wore targets on her body. As the woman moved, the camera captured every motion from every angle to analyze, translating these motions into data. This data was then taken and made non-human – basically to resemble Ardi, who had a longer torso, shorter legs and different feet.
Once the information was analyzed, the team hypothesized that Ardi represented a transition from a grasping foot to a foot that could walk efficiently, expending minimal energy over long distances.
“The cool thing about bringing it to life with simulation [was that] with a biomechanical model, we could test that theory and make the bones and muscles move,” McGuan said.
From what they gleaned from Ardi’s bones, these scientists hypothesized that humans developed from a whole different branch than chimpanzees, and were not, in fact, related to chimpanzees as some experts have thought.
The implications, according to McGuan, are “huge.” Huge enough, in fact, that LifeModeler was featured on a recent Discovery Channel special, “Discovering Ardi,” highlighting the discovery.
“This is brand-new science,” McGuan said. “It changes our understanding of human origins and early evolution.”
And the discovery has not gone unnoticed, by any means.
“We are receiving international exposure and have many noted scientists from all over the world visiting our humble offices in San Clemente,” McGuan said. McGuan has been working in the field for about 20 years, after starting with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from University of California, Irvine. Today, he is an internationally recognized thought leader in the field, has published many technical papers and is frequently invited as a keynote speaker for conferences on biomechanics.
McGuan is passionate about what he does.
“I’ve always been involved in sports and interested in how the human body moves, develops and heals itself,” McGuan said. “As an engineer, I wanted to dig deeper to understand the physics of the human body.”
This led him to develop his software, LifeMOD – a tool which helps provide that very same understanding.
He founded the company by himself, choosing San Clemente as his location, being a San Clemente native himself, and flew solo for four years. The story began with Nike and a simple shoe model. As the company progressed, McGuan developed a human model, working his way up to the knee, then the leg, and then a full human model.
“It started to take off substantially,” McGuan said.
Today, he employs a multitude of engineers, medical doctors and scientists to develop this technology. LifeMOD technology was first developed 20 years ago, but it has evolved greatly over time. The original idea was to create a design tool, which would be able to use a human model, not an actual human, to test out the function of a design, which would later be used in the body, on the body or by the body.
Before, interested parties had to build a physical prototype, using a cadaver’s leg and moving it with machines.
“With the software, we can bring the computer model of a knee into the body,” McGuan said. “We can get a lot more data than with a machine.”
According to McGuan, in the time it takes to do one device with the old system, LifeModeler can do hundreds of thousands of tests with its computer model. Clients are drawn globally, with projects as diverse as designing better shoes for Nike, helping NASA keep astronauts healthy and helping Honda build better motorcycles. The software, says McGuan, is now used all over the world, in major universities and orthopedic companies – including the top six internationally – for orthopedic implants such as knees and hips.
McGuan reports his company has changed the way orthopedic manufacturers develop knees.
McGuan and his colleagues are delighted with the results of their work on Ardi.
“It’s fantastic,” McGuan said. “It’s thrilling to have the results of your life’s work utilized in a discovery like this and to really make a difference.”
So what’s next for LifeModeler?
Lovejoy and McGuan have been invited to give a series of lectures on the work and a special conference on the topic will be held in Valencia, Spain next year. Add to that a series of scientific papers, development of an educational Web site, collaboration on future studies – this, said McGuan, is “only the beginning.”
ON THE WEB: For more information about LifeModeler, visit www.lifemodeler.com. To read more about Ardi or watch an online video, visit the Discovery Channel’s Web site at dsc.discovery.com/tv/ardipithecus/ardipithecus.html.
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Wild when you learn about these local companies doing big things. Very cool