Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 2 October 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5949, pp. 41 - 43
DOI: 10.1126/science.326_41
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News Focus

Ardipithecus ramidus:

The View From Afar

Ann Gibbons

The Middle Awash project, which includes 70 scientists from 18 nations, is best known for its discovery of the 4.4-million-year-old partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus at Aramis, about 34 kilometers north of here. That skeleton is now dramatically revising ideas of how upright walking evolved and how our earliest ancestors differed from chimpanzees. But Aramis is just one of 300 localities in the Middle Awash, which is the only place in the world to yield fossils that span the entire saga of hominid evolution. At last count, this team had gathered 19,000 vertebrate fossils over the past 19 years. These include about 300 specimens from seven species of hominins, from some of the first members of the human family, such as 5.8-million-year-old Ar. ramidus kadabba, to the earliest members of our own species, Homo sapiens, which lived here about 160,000 years ago.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)