The fossil records is a snapshot in time of a breeding population."
fishtank: "There’s a lot of lying and wishful thinking in the interpretations in the fossil record. Case in point: Ardi from a year or so ago was an ape, notaink" [presumably: "not a link"]
Current thinking on "Ardi":
"Ardipithecus is a very early hominin genus.
Two species are described in the literature: A. ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago[1] during the early Pliocene, and A. kadabba, dated to approximately 5.6 million years ago (late Miocene).[2]..."...A. ramidus was named in September 1994.
The first fossil find was dated to 4.4 million years ago based on its interval between two volcanic strata: the basal Gaala Tuff Complex (GATC) and the Daam Aatu Basaltic Tuff (DABT).[3]"...More fragments were recovered in 1994, amounting to 45% of the total skeleton.
This fossil was originally described as a species of Australopithecus, but White and his colleagues later published a note in the same journal renaming the fossil under a new genus, Ardipithecus.
Between 1999 and 2003, a multidisciplinary team led by Sileshi Semaw discovered bones and teeth of nine A. ramidus individuals at As Duma in the Gona Western Margin of Ethiopia's Afar Region.[5]
The fossils were dated to between 4.32 and 4.51 million years old..."
Map of the fossil sites of the earliest hominids:
Genera of the Hominini "Tribe":
- Subtribe Panina
- Pan (chimpanzees)
- Homo (humans)
- †Paranthropus
- †Australopithecus
- †Sahelanthropus
- †Orrorin
- †Ardipithecus
- †Kenyanthropus