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A blackened, broken leg bone from Earth’s prehistoric past may hold the answer to when early humans diverged from apes and started their own evolutionary path.The fossilized find, first uncovered two decades ago, suggests that early humans regularly walked on two feet some seven million years ago... Since many consider bipedalism the major milestone that put our own lineage on a different evolutionary path than the apes, Sahelanthropus could be the very oldest known hominin—the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all of our immediate ancestors.The species could even be our oldest non-ape ancestor, if its lineage...

When the famous skeleton of an early human ancestor known as Lucy was discovered in Africa in the 1970s, scientists asked: Where did she come from? Now, fossils found in the same region are providing solid answers, researchers have announced. Lucy is a 3.5-foot-tall (1.1-meter-tall) adult skeleton that belongs to an early human ancestor, or hominid, known as Australopithecus afarensis. The species lived between 3 million and 3.6 million years ago and is widely considered an ancestor of modern humans. The new fossils are from the most primitive species of Australopithecus, known as Australopithecus anamensis. The remains date to about...

Oct 2, 2009 — A new fossil human ancestor has taken center stage. Those who love Lucy, the australopithecine made famous by Donald Johanson (and numerous TV specials), are in for a surprise. Lucy is a has been. Her replacement is not Desi Arnaz, but is designated Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus – the new leading lady in the family tree. Actually, she has been around for years since her discovery in Ethiopia in 1992. It has taken Tim White and crew 15 years to piece together the bones that were in extremely bad condition. But now, Ardi has made...

Fossil hunters working in Ethiopia have unearthed the remains of at least nine primitive hominids that are between 4.5 million and 4.3 million years old. The fossils, which were uncovered at As Duma in the north of the country, are mostly teeth and jaw fragments, but also include parts of hands and feet. All finds belong to the same species - Ardipithecus ramidus - which was first described about a decade ago. Details of the discoveries appear in the latest issue of Nature magazine. Scientists say features of a phalanx, or foot bone, unearthed at the site show the hominid...

Another species has been added to the family tree of early human ancestors — and to controversies over how straight or tangled were the branches of that tree. Long before Homo erectus, Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy, more than three million years ago) and several other distant kin, scientists are reporting today, there lived a primitive hominid species in what is now Ethiopia about 5.5 million to 5.8 million years ago. That would make the newly recognizied species one of the earliest known human ancestors, perhaps one of the first to emerge after the chimpanzee and human lineages diverged from a common...

One of the most controversial proposed members of the human evolutionary family, considered an ancient ape by some skeptical scientists, is the real hominid deal, an analysis of a newly reconstructed skull base finds. By 4.4 million years ago, Ardipithecus ramidus already possessed a relatively short, broad skull base with a forward-placed opening for the spinal cord, an arrangement exclusive to ancient hominids and people today, William Kimbel of Arizona State University in Tempe reported on April 11 at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting. Although features of the skull's floor evolved substantially in Homo species leading to...

A comparison of ancient and contemporary footprints reveals that our ancestors were strolling much like we do some 3.6 million years ago, a time when they were still quite comfortable spending time in trees, according to a study which will be published in the March 22 issue of the journal PLoS ONE... Although some researchers have argued that the 4.4 million-year-old ancient human Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") described in October 2009 was adept at walking on her hind legs, many disagree... Likely left by Australopithecus afarensis, the same species as "Lucy," these prints show an upright gait, but it has remained...

Humans were living and thriving on open grassland in Africa as early as 2 million years ago, making stone tools and using them to butcher zebra and other animals... All of the other earlier hominins that have been found in the geological record -- such as Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus afarensis -- known as Ardi and Lucy, respectively -- lived either in dense forest or in a mosaic of woodland, shrub and grasses, says Plummer... Plummer's team first started excavating Kanjera South in the 1990s, in search of primitive toolkits consisting of hammer stones, stone cores that were struck to...

After 15 years of rumors, researchers made public fossils from a 4.4 million-year-old human forebear they say reveals that our ancestors were more modern than scholars had assumed, widening the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from apes and chimpanzees. The highlight of the extensive fossil trove was a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings. An international research team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, unveiled on Thursday remains from 36 males, females and young of an ancient prehuman species called...

The big news from the journal Science today is the discovery of the oldest human skeleton—a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed "Ardi." She lived in what is now Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, which makes her over a million years older than the famous Lucy fossil, found in the same region 35 years ago. Buried among the slew of papers about the new find is one about the creature's sex life. It makes fascinating reading, especially if you like learning why human females don't know when they are ovulating, and men lack the clacker-sized testicles...

A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday. The centerpiece of the diverse collection of primate, animal and plant fossils is the near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor that demonstrates our earliest forebears looked nothing like a chimpanzee or other large primate, as is now commonly believed. Instead, the findings suggest that the last common ancestor of humans and primates, which existed nearly...

The exceptionally well-preserved fossil primate known as "Ida" is not a missing link as some have claimed, according to an analysis in the journal Nature. The research is the first independent assessment of the claims made in a scientific paper and a television documentary earlier this year. Dr Erik Seiffert says that Ida belonged to a group more closely linked to lemurs than to monkeys, apes or us. His team's conclusions come from an analysis of another fossil primate. The newly described animal - known as Afradapis longicristatus - lived some 37 million years ago in northern Egypt, during the...

WASHINGTON -- Move over, Lucy. A 4-foot-tall female nicknamed Ardi, who lived 4.4 million years ago in Africa, has replaced you as the earliest best known ancestor of the human species. Ardi's nearly complete skeleton is 1 million years older than Lucy's, pushing back the point when hominids - pre-human primates - are known to have split from the evolutionary line that led to chimpanzees and gorillas, an international team of scientists announced Thursday. "Ardi is not a chimp. It's not a human. It's what we used to be," said paleontologist Tim White, an authority on human evolution at the...

Human exceptionalism received a boost today with the news that human beings apparently did not evolve from apes...

Did apes descend from us? Skeleton of Ardi, 1.2-metre, 50-kilogram female may hold the clue Joseph Hall Science writer It may well be the closest we will ever come to the missing link between chimps and humans and the most important anthropological find ever. In a series of studies released today by the journal Science, researchers have revealed a creature that took the first upright steps toward human beings and fundamentally changes the way we look at our earliest evolutionary ancestors. The research brings into question the belief that our most distant ancestors descended from apes. What's closer to the...

Bones of “Ardi,” New Human Evolution Fossil, “Crushed Nearly to Smithereens” Another new alleged missing link has been found, if you consider something discovered in the early 1990’s new. This fossil seems to have spent almost as much time under the microscope at Berkeley as it did in the ground in Ethiopia, when it was first buried about 4.4 million years ago. Why did it take over 15 years for the reports on this fossil to finally be published, besides the fact that it allowed more time for planning the now-customary PR campaign? A 2002 article in Science explains exactly...

1. Meet “Ardi”Evolutionists aren’t yet sure if they should call it a human ancestor, but one thing they do know is that “Ardi” does away with the idea of a “missing link.”Although first discovered in the early 1990s, the bones of Ardipithecus ramidus are only now being nominated for evolutionists’ fossil hall of fame—via a slew of papers in a special issue of the journal Science. In it, Ardi’s researchers describe the bones and make the case that Ardi is even more important in the history of human evolution than Lucy. Despite claims of its evolutionary significance, one of the...

The papers and news sites are full of claims about what some still think is a “new” candidate for an evolutionary ancestor of humans. Called Ardipithecus ramidus (often just “Ardi”), most of the articles actually explain that it’s really a detailed reanalysis of a fossil category that’s been around for years, but still the phones run hot with concerned creationists or gloating skeptics. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the journalistic temptation to run with headlines such as “Before Lucy came Ardi, new earliest hominid found”—even though the article itself states that the bones were first discovered in 1994!1 In...

Probable life appearance in anterior view of Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi"), ARA-VP 6/500.Photograph by: Handout, Illustrations 2009, J.H. Matternes An international team of scientists unveiled Thursday the results of 15 years of study of one of the oldest known human ancestors, Ardipithecus ramidus, which they say overturns much of what we know about human evolution. And surprisingly, it's also rewriting the story of our relation to gorillas and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, and their development as well. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, one of the authors involved in the research and the man who discovered the first pieces of the most complete...

The world's oldest and most complete skeleton of a potential human ancestor -- named "Ardi," short for Ardipithecus ramidus -- has been unveiled by an international team of 47 researchers. Their unprecedented, 17-year investigation of Ardi is detailed in a special issue of the journal Science.