News From the Field
Ethiopian Desert Yields Oldest Hominid Skeleton

October 1, 2009

Nearly 17 years after finding the fossilized tooth of a new human ancestor, an international team of scientists announced their reconstruction of a partial skeleton of the hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, which they say revolutionizes our understanding of the earliest phase of human evolution. The female skeleton, nicknamed Ardi, is 4.4 million years old, 1.2 million years older than the skeleton of Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis. Image credit: Tim White Full Story

Source
University of California, Berkeley

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