“Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found
Jamie Shreeve
Science editor, National Geographic magazine
October 1, 2009
Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye.
While important, however, none of those earlier fossils are nearly as revealing as the newly announced remains, which in addition to Ardi’s partial skeleton include bones representing at least 36 other individuals.”
news.nationalgeographic.com/.../091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html
Interesting question!
“Q. Pieces of Ardi were smashed and damaged when found. How can one possibly reconstruct a skeleton, particularly the skull, from all of these fragments?
A. Thankfully, modern technology has significantly improved our options for resolving this problem. Professor Gen Suwa in Tokyo set up a micro-CT lab in which the crushed bones were scanned. From these scans, the individual bone fragments were digitally put back into anatomical position. The work required amazing attention to detail and took years to reach consensus among the hominid team. (I studied the monkey fossils, so I watched this part of the analysis from the sidelines). Simultaneous to the micro-CT research, Professor White worked with plaster casts of the squashed specimen, cutting the plaster pieces apart and then gluing them back together into anatomical position. After years of this meticulous work, White and Suwa compared their two reconstructions and found that they had reached the same configuration. It was a nice way to independently test their abilities to reconstruct such damaged fossils.
www.physorg.com/news173615221.html -”
The artist, skilled in reconstructions, added the missing bones according to the assembled skeleton, and then flesh according to the reconstructed complete skeleton.
The hair and breasts are entirely imagination.
They should probably have put black bars over Ardi's chest and hips, just to avoid getting ICR all hot and bothered.