"The larger australopithecine body included changes to the spine, pelvis and leg joints that make walking an effective form of locomotion. Though still capable of climbing and resting in trees, a habitual bipedal posture freed the hands to manipulate, carry and throw objects. Though the finger and toe bones are curved and proportionally longer than in humans, afarensis hands were similar to humans in most other respects."
http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/hfs2.html
"The hands of apes and humans differ considerably with regard to proportions between several bones. Of critical significance is the long thumb relative to other fingers, which is the basis for human-like pad-to-pad precision grip capability.... In this article, the manual proportions of Australopithecus afarensis from locality AL 333/333w (Hadar, Ethiopia) are investigated by means of bivariate and multivariate morphometric analyses.... Our results indicate that A. afarensis possessed overall manual proportions, including an increased thumb/hand relationship that, contrary to previous reports, is fully human and would have permitted pad-to-pad human-like precision grip capability. We show that these human-like proportions in A. afarensis mainly result from hand shortening, as in modern humans, and that these conclusions are robust enough as to be non-dependent on whether the bones belong to a single individual or not."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12662944
Hmm. Like an ape in some ways, like a human in others. Could it be--gasp!--a transitional???
A chimp is more like a human than a rhesus monkey is. If there were no chimps or rhesus monkeys around, and someone found a fossil of a rhesus and a fossil of a chimp, couldn't they conclude that the chimp was a transitional form between the rhesus and man?