Ardi, Ethiopia, 4.4 million years : Human Evolution : DISCOVER Magazine
A big analysis of the 4.4-million-year-old fossil shows that humans left the trees before leaving the forest and getting much smarter.by Jill Neiman
Anthropologists are suddenly tearing up their long-held origin tale—that modern humans evolved from hunched, proto human apes roaming the wide-open savannas of old. The discovery of a 4,400,000-year-old hominid named Ardipithecus ramidus fondly shortened to “Ardi” suggests that for a stretch during the early Pliocene, our ancestors instead lived in lush woodlands and walked on two feet. In fact, Ardi’s unexpected traits put to rest the whole idea of a chimplike missing link at the root of the human family tree.Ardi and fossil bones from at least 35 other children and adults were uncovered in the Afar desert in Ethiopia by the Middle Awash research group. Toiling in volcanic ash, the group collected fossilized remains of more than 6,000 creatures ranging from antelopes to bats, as well as seeds and geologic samples.“This gave us a series of fantastic, high-resolution snapshots across an ancient landscape—a true picture of what Ardi’s habitat was like,” says University of California at Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White, a codirector of the team. “It tells us that long before hominids developed tools or big brains or ranged the open savanna, they were walking upright.” The evidence suggests Ardipithecus is ancestral to the early hominid Australopithecus, widely considered a forerunner of our own genus, Homo.
via #3: Meet Ardi, Your First Human Ancestor | Human Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine.
