Oldest Skeleton Unearthed May Be The Missing Link ( Archived) (14)

Do you think that this may be the "missing link" of our human/chimp ancestor that lived and to whom we may have evolved from?
This is a shortened version of today's CNN article.

CNN) -- The oldest-known hominid skeleton was a 4-foot-tall female who walked upright more than 4 million years ago and offers new clues to how humans may have evolved, scientists say.

Scientists believe that the fossilized remains, which were discovered in 1994 in Ethiopia and studied for years by an international team of researchers, support beliefs that humans and chimpanzees evolved separately from a common ancestor.

"This is not an ordinary fossil. It's not a chimp. It's not a human. It shows us what we used to be," said project co-director Tim White, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed "Ardi," is a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Aramis, Ethiopia. That makes Ardi more than a million years older than the celebrated Lucy, the partial ape-human skeleton found in Africa in 1974.

Ardi's 125-piece skeleton includes the skull, teeth, pelvis, hands and feet bones. Scientists say the data collected from Ardi's bone fragments over the past 17 years push back the story of human evolution further than previously believed.

"In fact, what Ardipithecus tells us is that we as humans have been evolving to what we are today for at least 6 million years," C. Owen Lovejoy, an evolutionary biologist at Kent State University and project anatomist, said Thursday.

Analysis of Ardi's skeleton reveals that she weighed about 110 pounds, had very long arms and fingers, and possessed an opposable big toe that would have helped her grasp branches while moving through trees.

Ardi's brain was believed to be the size of a chimp's, but she also had many human-like features, such as the ability to walk upright on two legs. Her "all-purpose type" teeth indicate that she probably ate a combination of plants, fruits and small mammals, scientists say.

"The Ardi findings are the work of 47 paleontologists and geologists representing 10 countries. The results will be published Friday in 11 articles in a special edition of the journal Science.

Until now, Australopithecus, nicknamed "Lucy," was the oldest fossil studied by scientists seeking to explain human evolution. Lucy is believed to have lived about 3.2 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.

Ardi's skeleton resides in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.

Hello, is anyone out there?

Unfortunately I completely lost faith in the evolutionary tract when I discovered (and might I add that I don't believe they removed it from the chain) that one of the links was based off of a tooth. They had no other skeletal remains and they created an entire creature off of the tooth, which later from DNA discovered it was a pig tooth.

They also found a skeleton that had a rib missing.

Forget about the"missing link"nonsense.There are all sorts of extinct,intermediate Forms.H.erectus is ancestral to H.sapiens etc.
The Thesis remains that life evolves from simple to complex.The "fossil record " is incomplete for obvious reasons.

Don't you think it's about time Homo Sapiens turned a corner--perhaps by our own volition without the intervention of cosmic radiation or unseen gods--and transcended into,What?
Maybe our descendents will become.....Homo Sentients.
Unless,of course,we destroy ourselves first.
It's difficult to be optimistic but what else can we do but lay down and die?

Forget about the"missing link"nonsense.There are all sorts of extinct,intermediate Forms.H.erectus is ancestral to H.sapiens etc.
The Thesis remains that life evolves from simple to complex.The "fossil record " is incomplete for obvious reasons.

Don't you think it's about time Homo Sapiens turned a corner--perhaps by our own volition without the intervention of cosmic radiation or unseen gods--and transcended into,What?
Maybe our descendents will become.....Homo Sentients.
Unless,of course,we destroy ourselves first.
It's difficult to be optimistic but what else can we do but lay down and die?

I learned about the discovery in Anthropology and people aren't especially ready to accept this as being our ancestor. The scientific community has verified that she was an upright human like animal. Science is ready to accept the truth, but the average people are not. Darwin already made discoveries of his own an was crucified for trying to teach The Theory of Evolution.

Another evo thread mods cant ya out law em lol..