Thursday, October 8, 2009

Oldest Human Ancestor Skeleton Found


You know Lucy, the last discovered remains of a human ancestor. Well before Lucy's time which was around 3.2 million years ago, evidence has shown us a whole other stage of evolution a million years before Lucy! You also know the popular prediction that someday we would discover that the earliest humans resembled and were related to chimpanzees. Well, archaeologists have discovered that is actually quite false. She's been given the nickname "Ardi" for it's assigned species, Ardipithecus ramidus. Ardi was about 110 pounds and had a small brain. on early humans a few notches because of the proof that Ardi and other like her, are nothing like the ape or anything relating to it! This find has really stepped up the research being done a notch because it proved that Ardi and others like her were nothing like apes or chimps as commonly assumed.


-Savannah B., period 7

6 comments:

R.Root said...

Wow. This is really interesting. It is weird to think that all this time we have looking for the "missing link", but all we found is this other link. Who knows, maybe it will be next?

Unknown said...

After reading this I checked out the website since this really caught my intention. They seem to keep saying that though it looks very apelike in structure it's not like the apes of today such as their "careful climbing" unlike apes who climb vertically all the time. Though it's almost like they forgot that apes probably have evolved too and this specis could have evolved from them. But whatever the case it there will be many more questions about this sure to come.

michelleh said...

This was interesting because i always was told this, and its wrong? Its amaing how much more knowledge we have now-a-days.

Talmague said...

Truly an amazing find. What amazes me is that though the article says that there is no relation to apes or chimpanzees, the artist's rendition looks a lot like, well, an ape or chimpanzee...

Ryan Jones said...

Wow, it's amazing how historians always seem to have all the details and facts about a topic, and then find a whole new idea or thing to disprove everything we've already known to exist about that subject. It seems that everyone has been taught about "Lucy" and learned all this new stuff about her. Now, it is all irrelevant to the discovery of the first human. I wonder what type of animal "Ardi" was actually related to?

pologirl77 said...

This is really interesting. Shows what technology and time will reveal about the world's history and our perception of it.