"The discovery a 4.4 million-year-old Ardipithecus skeleton rewrites the story of human!"
Fossils radically alter ideas about the look of man's earliest ancestors
Analysis of a near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia changes scientists' thinking about the appearance and behavior of our distant forebears.
Oct. 1, 2009 -- 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.
One researcher was interviewed about what more details can he unveiled to everyone and he said "This is not an ordinary fossil," added White, a paleontologist in the University of California at Berkeley's Human Evolution Research Center. "It's not a chimp. It's not a human."
Instead, he said, "It shows us what we used to be."
What does "Ardi" tell us?
The discovery of this 4.4 million-year-old woodland biped, with small, blunt canine teeth, hints that much of our unique sexual anatomy and physiology --even our families and the way we walk -- may all be fundamentally linked.
And far more ancient than ever imagined.
Click through this slide show and learn what the biggest takeaways are from the discovery of Ardipithecus.
Oldest Homonid Skeleton.
Ardi's extensive skeletal remains -- skull, jaw, hands, foot, pelvis, arms and legs -- confirm that by 4.4 million years ago our hominid ancestors were fully bipedal. They were capable of a primitive form of upright walking, while retaining ape-like grasping feet that facilitated tree climbing.
Ardi walked upright to get around on the ground, but she could take to the trees when needed. This unique combination of a primitive grasping big toe in the foot of a biped has never been seen before.
Since later hominids, like Lucy, were full-time bipeds, Ardi may represent a critical phase between our four-limbed palm-walking ape ancestors and the exclusive bipedality of later hominids, an "evolutionary mosaic" combining ape-like with human-like.
FOR MORE DETAILS VISIT TO DISCOVERY CHANNEL WEBSITE OR LIST THE SCHEDULE^^..