http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/oldest-hominid-skeleton-discovered/article1308179/
A 4.4 million-year-old skeleton discovered in northeastern Ethiopia suggests our ancestors were never knuckle-draggers and that they didn't look much like chimpanzees.
The first crumbling bones were unearthed in 1992, but it has taken an international team of researchers 17 years to piece together a detailed picture of one of the oldest known members of the human family, Ardipithecus ramidus.
“It is not a chimp. It's not a human. It shows us what we used to be,” says Tim White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California in Berkeley and one of the leaders of the international team that discovered and analyzed the fossils, which include a partial skeleton of a female, nicknamed Ardi, and bits and pieces of at least 36 individuals.
A 4.4 million-year-old skeleton discovered in northeastern Ethiopia suggests our ancestors were never knuckle-draggers and that they didn't look much like chimpanzees.
The first crumbling bones were unearthed in 1992, but it has taken an international team of researchers 17 years to piece together a detailed picture of one of the oldest known members of the human family, Ardipithecus ramidus.
“It is not a chimp. It's not a human. It shows us what we used to be,” says Tim White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California in Berkeley and one of the leaders of the international team that discovered and analyzed the fossils, which include a partial skeleton of a female, nicknamed Ardi, and bits and pieces of at least 36 individuals.
