Ardipithecus ramidus | Tadias Magazine

Above: Two papers published in the journal Science challenge
Ardi’s status as the oldest known fossil of human ancestor.

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Published: Friday, May 28, 2010

New York (Tadias) – You may remember our feature article last year on the widespread news coverage of an anthropological discovery in Ethiopia. The journal Science had published a collection of eleven papers explaining the findings of an international group of scientists regarding the bones of a human-like species named Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, who roamed the Earth 4.4 million years ago. The researchers had concluded then that Ardi is now the oldest known fossil of human ancestor; effectively unseating the famous 3.2 million years old Lucy (Dinqnesh) — whose skeletal remains are currently touring the United States.

There is new development regrading the discovery. “Another scientist has stepped forward to challenge Ardi’s classification as a member of the human lineage after the divergence from African apes. Its primitive anatomy, he contends, suggests a species predating the common ancestor of the human and chimpanzee family trees,” The New York Times reports.

“Two critiques are being published Friday in the journal Science, along with responses from the research team that reported last October the first detailed description and interpretation of the 4.4-million-year-old skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi. The specimen, an adult female, probably stood four feet tall and was more than a million years older than Lucy, the famous skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis.”

Last November we had interviewed Dr. Zeresenay (Zeray) Alemseged, the paleoanthropologist who discovered ‘Lucy’s Baby’, “Selam,” a three-year-old girl who lived and died in Ethiopia 3.3 million years ago. Dr. Alemseged, who was born in the ancient city of Axum, is currently serving as the Director and Curator of the Department of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences.

Click here to read our earlier interview with Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged.

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Above: Artist’s conception of “Ardi”, short for Ardipithecus
ramidus. Per WaPo: “shattered skeleton that an international
team of scientists believes is a major breakthrough in the study
of human origins.” Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia
and a “key moment” in her discovery occurred on Nov. 5, 1994,
“when a Berkeley graduate student, Yohannes Haile-Selassie of
Ethiopia, found fragments of two finger bones.”
(J.H. Matternes/Science/ABC News Photo Illustration).

The New York Times
CONSIDERED | Art by Lou Beach
Published: October 4, 2009
The Hominid Sisterhood

Lucy, you sweet young thing. No longer can you lay claim to being the oldest creature on the human branch of the primate family tree.

The honor goes to Ardi, who at 4.4 million years old has you beat by a little over a million. Her assembled bones were unveiled Thursday by scientists who had been analyzing the Ardipithecus specimen since fragments were found in Ethiopia in 1992.

The particulars: Taller and heavier than Lucy, she weighed about 120 pounds and stood four feet tall (yes, she probably walked upright, though she was still an agile tree-climber). Forget the high heels; her feet had no arches (Lucy’s did). Tim D. White of Berkeley, a leader of the study team, said, “We are getting so close to that common ancestor of hominids and chimps, and we’d love to find an earlier skeleton.”

Read the rest of the Article »

Washington Post
By Joel Achenbach
Thursday, October 1, 2009;

“Ardi” is the nickname given to a remarkable, shattered skeleton that an international team of scientists believes is a major breakthrough in the study of human origins. The skeletal remains were painstakingly recovered from the Ethiopian desert along with bones from at least 35 other members of a species scientists call Ardipithecus ramidus. The 15-year investigation of Ardipithecus culminated Thursday in the publication of a raft of papers in the online edition of the journal Science, as well as dual press conferences in Washington and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “This is huge. This is the biggest discovery really since the ‘Lucy’ skeleton of the 1970s,” said Carol Ward, a University of Missouri paleoanthropologist who was not involved with the research but had been given a preview so that she could offer an independent assessment.

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