You are on page 1of 9

7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …

ardi ardipithecus ramidus fossil discovery human evolution

missing link last common ancestor human evolution pictures images hominid fossil find

Home > Evolution > Ardipithecus ramidus Ardi hominid fossil find human evolution pictures images

Site Map | * Popular Pages * | Slide Shows | Guest Book | Links | About Us | Download Wisdoms |

The Faith vs

Ardi - human evolution - pictures images Reason Debate


.
Ardipithecus ramidus hominid fossil find Charles Darwin
biography
.
The first of
these pictures - Alfred Russel
the photograph Wallace biography
detailing the .
partial Thomas Malthus
fossilized Essay on
skeleton of Population
Ardi on the left .
- was released
Darwin quotes
by the
his beliefs about
American
God
Association for
the .
Advancement Thomas Henry
of Science Huxley
(AAAS) in Darwin's Bulldog
association
with press
conferences
announcing the
history of the
discovery of
Ardi, and her
kind, in
Ethiopia that
were
simultaneously
held in both
Addis Ababa,

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 1/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …
Ethiopia, and
Washington
D.C., U.S.A.,
on 1 October
2009.

The second of
our series of
images - the
drawing of
Ardi on the
right - is
sketched by
J.H. Matternes
and comes
from the same
source.
It is a
visualization
based on the
fossil find and
represents a
hominid female
who weighed
about 50
kilograms (110
pounds) and
stood about
120
centimeters
(just under 4
feet) tall.

There was
extensive
coverage of
the Ardi
skeleton in the
well-regarded
magazine
Science, as
regularly
published
under the
auspices of the
AAAS, in a
special edition
of 2 October
2009. Special
editions of
Science
magazine are
infrequent and
age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 2/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …
this one is
largely devoted
to the Ardi
fossilized
skeleton
discovery.

The AAAS
and Science
magazine offer
in-depth details
of their
research,
spanning 17
years, in the
form of 11
separate
scientific
papers
published
about the find.
You have to
log in - it is
free - and
available here -
Science
Magazine

Researchers have given the


name Ardi - short for
Ardipithecus ramidus - to the
most complete specimen out of
more than 35 Ardipithecus
ramidus fossil hominids so far
discovered.
The name Ardipithecus ramidus
was arrived at using traditional
Greek suffixes but preceding
them with words in the local
Afar language in which Ardi
means "ground" and ramid
means "root." The resulting
Ardipithecus ramidus
terminology being intended to
mean "root of the ground ape."

In their investigations into this


particular fossilized skeleton
discovery a team of
researchers have have
painstakingly pieced together

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 3/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …
some 125 fragments of bone -
including much of the skull, hands, feet, arms, legs and pelvis.
Tim White who directs University of California, Berkeley’s, Human Evolution Research Center and a
co-leader of the Middle Awash research team that discovered and studied the new Ardipithecus
ramidus fossils, has stated, "To understand the biology, the parts you really want are the skull and
teeth, the pelvis, the limbs and the hands and the feet. And we have all of them."

The first find of fossilized remains of Ardipithecus ramidus was made in 1992 when the shiny polished
surface of a molar tooth was spotted among pebbles in a semi-arid desert area of northern Ethiopia.
Several more teeth and small bones were found soon afterwards and these were subsequently
classified as having belonged to a hominid species.

The many fragments of fossil bone that have now been recognised as having belonged to the individual
Ardipithecus ramidus now known as Ardi were found at a site where, late in 1994, one of a team of
researchers who were crawling shoulder to shoulder across a promising patch of desert where erosion
had exposed clay sediment near the village of Aramis in the Afar Triangle made the discovery of two
finger bones which he immediately estimated as being from a hominid. Painstaking recovery operations
followed on from this discovery and subsequently continued into 1997.

On discovery Ardi was found in a very fragmented condition. Badly broken elements such as the
untrained eye sees here were interpreted by professional palaeontologists - with the aid of
specialised computer software - into a scientific opinion about Ardi's skeleton and bodily form.

Due to their extreme fragility the fossilized skeleton remains have had to undergo extensive scientific
recovery and cleaning and preservation prior to detailed examination and assessment over the past 15
years.

It appears that the fossil remains were somewhat scattered and broken to the extent that the research
team suggest the specimen itself had probably been trampled by a large animal before it became
fossilized.

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 4/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …
The skull alone was found in more than 60 fragmentary
pieces and it had been crushed so as to finally occupy
only a couple of centimeters of depth in the clay in which it
had been "completely flattened".

Due to the evident thicknesses of some of the bones the


research team think that Ardi was probably a female.

The Ardi fossilized skeleton has been dated using the


volcanic layers of soil above and below the find as being
from 4.4 million years ago. This means she displaces the
famous pre-human Australopithecus afarensis / Lucy fossil, (found in Africa in 1974 - just 74
kilometres from where the fossil remains of Ardi were found), itself dated from 3.2 million years ago as
being from the earliest "reliably known about" fossil from a possible close human ancestor species.

The Ardi fossil discovery seems to be that of another important missing link fossil that could do much
to fill the large gap in scientific knowledge about primate evolution before the "Lucy" Australopithecus
afarensis skeleton, but after the hominid line split from the line that led to today's chimpanzees and to
open a window into a period of human evolution we have known little about. That period when early
hominids were establishing themselves in Africa, soon after diverging from the last ancestor they shared
with the African apes.

The research team have suggested that even if Ardi is not on the
direct evolutionary line in terms of human origins, the fossilized
skeleton will definitely yield new insights into the evolution of the
earliest ancestors of mankind and how we evolved from the common
ancestor we share with chimps, bonobos, gorillas and other higher
primates.

Ardipithecus is seen as having had a mix of "primitive" traits, shared


with its predecessors, and "derived" traits, which it shares exclusively A Japanese team investigated
with later hominids. One of the authors of one of the scientific papers the Ardi fossil discovery using
appearing in Science magazine has stated that the Ardi fossil is "so rife specialised X-ray and
with anatomical surprises, that no one could have imagined it without Computed Tomography
direct fossil evidence." To quote Tim White again:- scanning.

"In Ardipithecus we have an unspecialized form that hasn't


evolved very far in the direction of Australopithecus. So when you go from head to
toe, you're seeing a mosaic creature, that is neither chimpanzee, nor is it human. It
is Ardipithecus."

The angle of Ardi's head compared with her spine together with the evident
nature of her feet, pelvis, legs, and hands suggest she was well capable of
walking on two legs although with a stooped posture. The lack of arches to
her feet, however, indicate some limitations to the time she could
comfortably spend walking and to the distances that she could comfortably
travel.
Running would have been difficult.
The pelvis and hip show the gluteal muscles were positioned so to allow
walking upright on the ground but Ardi could climb using all four limbs
when moving about in the trees. The big toes of her feet were opposable
for grasping and the pelvis structure would have allowed her to negotiate
A digitally rendered tree branches.

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 5/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …
composite image from
Science showing the foot “When climbing on all fours, she did not walk on her knuckles,
of the "Ardi" partial fossil like a chimp or gorilla, but on her palms. No ape today walks
skeleton. on its palms."
Tim White

Other features of the fossilized skeleton suggest it was not suited, like the skeletal structure of modern-
day chimps, to swinging or hanging from trees or to walking on front-limb knuckles.

Contemporary chimps often have robust quarrels over food or in relation to access to females who are
ready to breed. The facts that the canine teeth near the front of the mouth in both male and female
Ardipithicus are much smaller than a modern chimp's canines, and that there seems to have been little
difference in the adult size of males and females, both lead the research team to strongly infer a
relatively squabble-free group existence for Ardi and her kind - and even, perhaps, an existence where
there was a possibility for monogamous and co-operative pair bonding with males bringing foods to
females with whom they had paired.

Ardi's dentition and her tooth enamel is such as to suggest a largely, but not exclusively, vegetarian diet
of fruits and roots with insects, eggs and perhaps small mammals varying the menu.
Species that feed on tough abrasive foods generally have a thick tooth enamel wheras Ardi's was of an
intermediate thickness. Diet affects the carbon isotopes residing in tooth enamel - an analysis of Ardi's
tooth enamel suggests a diverse diet, including fruit and other woodland-based foods such as nuts and
leaves.

Experts believe Ardi is very, very close to the last common ancestor of
humans and chimps, thought to have lived five to seven million years ago.
Her discovery tends to re-cast science's previously accepted view of pre-
human ancestors as being chimp-like and to regard hominid characteristics
as being more ancient than previously thought.
There is even speculation that chimps and gorillas might have developed their habits of walking on their
knuckles relatively late in association with greater specialisation toward arboreal patterns of life and
that chimps and gorillas have themselves also evolved substantially since the time of the last common
ancestor with humans.

Ardi is “turning evolution on its head” - “we’re going to have to rewrite the
textbooks on human origins.”
C. Owen Lovejoy

"We can't say this species was a direct ancestor of modern humans, so we have to
be careful. But it suggests that the direction of early hominids was away from the
chimp."
Tim White

"People think that modern chimpanzees have not changed and therefore, our
common ancestor looked like a chimp ... As if it was only the human branch that
evolved. In fact, Ardi is more primitive than a chimpanzee."
Tim White

"What is fascinating is that Ardipithecus is closer to our last common ancestor than
is the modern chimpanzee."
Christoph Zollikofer Professor of Anthropology at the University of Zurich

Such speculation holds that the findings suggest that this last common ancestor of humans and
primates, which existed nearly 2 million years earlier, was a primitive creature that shared few traits

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 6/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …
with modern-day members of either group.
One of the researchers has asserted that "The common ancestor looked like Ardi. It's the chimp and
gorilla that have evolved enormously, not hominids. Hominids have concentrated their evolution in two
things -- upright walking and brain. Everything else is pretty primitive."

"Darwin said we have to be really careful. The only way we're really going to know
what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it. Well, at 4.4 million
years ago we found something pretty close to it...And, just like Darwin appreciated,
evolution of the ape lineages and the human lineage has been going on
independently since the time those lines split, since that last common ancestor we
shared."
Tim White

"With Ardipithecus, we have to bear in mind this was a species that lived 4.4
million years ago, and a lot has happened since then in human evolution, when it
comes to behavior."
Tim White

Although the Afar Triangle area of Ethiopia is now a semi-arid desert, the scientists have found
fossilized wood and seeds alongside the Ardipithecus ramidus bones and consider that it would have
featured woodland 4.4 million years ago.

"Just as we send planetary missions into deep space, this was a mission into the
deep past, into Planet Earth's past, and into our past."
Tim White

Oxygen isotopes found in the fossil remains suggest that the climate in Ardi's time and place was humid
and relatively cool rather than tropical.
The other fossils discovered come from fig, hackenberry and palm trees, and from 29 species of birds,
such as swifts, doves, lovebirds, owls and peacocks. Also evident are snails, 20 new species of small
mammals, (including bats, shrews and mice), and larger animals, such as hyenas, bears, rhinoceroses,
elephants, monkeys and antelope.
Based on the results of almost two decades of careful study collecting everything from animal bones to
pollen in the region the team have concluded that Ardi lived in a lush and wooded environment

This would seem to indicate that our ancestors began walking upright in open woodland settings, not
on grassy savannas as prior generations of researchers had, (it would perhaps be fair to say)
confidently, speculated.
Under such speculation bipedalism was seen as very necessary to gain sight of potential predators and
to find food in open grasslands.

As with the Lucy fossil that of Ardi had a relatively large brain, about the size that of a modern femaled
chimpanzee, and about a third of the size of that of modern man.
Her hands with their opposable thumbs were capable of grasping, and the holding and manipulation of
objects is believed to have been an essential attribute that allowed primates scope to become gradually
more intelligent as it allowed them to pick things up, to manipulate them and, in the case of chimps and
humans, to use them as tools.

Such features of the Ardi fossilized skeleton discovery support the view that the expansion in brain size
came long after the evolution of upright walking on two legs.

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 7/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …

Human Physique comes as an inheritance


so what about Human Nature?
The answer to this question seems to raise deep, but interesting,
issues associated with Human Existence and even with
the Faith versus Reason Debate itself.

It is widely known that Plato, pupil of and close friend to Socrates, accepted that Human Beings have a " Tripartite
Soul " where the individual Human Psyche is composed of three aspects - Wisdom-Rationality, Spirited-Will and
Appetite-Desire.

What is less widely appreciated is that such major World Faiths as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism see
"Spirituality" as being relative to "Desire" and to "Wrath".

"...man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,


whose flower and fruitage is the world..."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 8/9
7/24/2010 Ardi human evolution pictures images …

Human Beings are "social beings" and it seems highly likely that individual Human-innate
"bundles of relations and knots of roots"
give rise to the "World" of Human Societies!!!

For Indisputable Wisdoms about Human Natureplease visit our Human Nature -
Tripartite Soul page

Return to start of
Ardi - human evolution - pictures images
Ardipithecus ramidus hominid fossil find page

age-of-the-sage.org/…/ardi_fossilized_… 9/9

You might also like