'Ardi:' 4.4 Million-Year-Old Fossil is Oldest Human Ancestor

[SuuT]

Scientists today told the world what they know about Ardipithecus ramidus -- "Ardi" for short -- the oldest pre-human species yet found. Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.

Artist's conception of what Ardipithecus ramidus would have looked like 4.4 million years ago. (J.H. Matternes/Science/ABC News Photo Illustration)"This may be the most important specimen in the history of evolutionary biology," said C. Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent State University in Ohio, in an interview with ABCNews.com.

Lovejoy was one of more than 40 researchers from around the world who analyzed the Ardi fossils.

Ardi is not the long-sought "missing link" -- the ancestor that scientists say humans and apes have in common -- but comes close. And it helps show that both human beings and apes have evolved from something, about six million years ago, that did not look much like either...

Read the whole thing

[Loki]

Here is an artist's impression of what "Ardi" might have looked like.

[Cato]

IIRC, this fossil also shows that the human lineage has nothing to do with chimps, which has been an assumption all along by biologists.