Scoliosis facilitates terrestrial feeding from grasses, trees, and bushes. Given the many benefits of bipedality which depends on a particularly formed spine, it is likely that selection for bipedalism played a large role in the development of the spine as we see it today, in spite of the potential for "scoliotic deviations". According to the fossil record, scoliosis may have been more prevalent among earlier hominids such as Australopithecus and Homo erectus, when bipedality was first emerging. Their fossils indicate that there may have been selection over time for a slight reduction in lumbar length to what we see today, favoring
Scoliosis drawn perpendicular to the upper endplate of the uppermost vertebra involved and the lower endplate of the lowest vertebra involved. For people with two curves, Cobb angles are followed for both curves. In some people, lateral-bending X-rays are obtained to assess the flexibility of the curves or the primary and compensatory curves. Congenital and idiopathic scoliosis that develops before the age of 10 is referred to as early-onset scoliosis. Scoliosis that develops after 10 is referred to as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Screening adolescents without symptoms for scoliosis is of unclear benefit. Scoliosis is defined as a three-dimensional deviation in the