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Fossils
of Oldest Human Ancestor Discovered in
Ethiopia
 An
international team of scientists working
in Ethiopia's Afar Depression recently
announced the discovery of hominid fossils
that belong to the oldest human ancestor
ever found. The fossils which date back
between 5.2 and 5.8 millions years ago,
are significant because they indicate that
the ancestors of present-day humans split
evolutionary company with apes more than 5
million years ago. The speciments are
recognizable as early hominids and
distinguishable from early chimpanzees,
because some of their teeth
characteristics are shared exclusively
with later hominids. In addition, the
bones have a distinctive feature found
only in primates that walk upright on two
feet, unlike apes, which do not walk
bipedally. This new fossil discovery also
supports Darwin's herory that hominids
arose in Africa.
The first
of the eleven specimens (which include a
jawbone, several hand and foot bones, arm
bone fragments and a partial collar bone)
was discovered in December 1997 by
Yohannes Haile-Selassie, an Ehiopian
doctoral candidate in paleontology at the
University of California at Berkeley.
Haile-Selassie found the jawbone with
teeth while working in Ethiopia's Middle
Awash area, approximately 140 miles
northeast of Addis
Ababa.
The area is about 50 miles south of Hadar,
where the 3.2 million year-old "Dinknesh"
or "Lucy" skeleton was found nearly thirty
years ago, which was previously believed
to be the oldest human fossils ever found
nearly thirty years ago,. Paleontological
research has been conducted in the Middle
Awash study area since 1981 under the
direction of an international team of
scientists led by Professor Desmond Clark
and Tim White of U.C. &endash; Berkeley,
Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos
National Laboratory and Drs. Berhane Asfaw
and Yonas Beyene of Addis
Ababa.
The
discovery of these Ehiopian fossils, named
Ardipithecus ramidus Kadabba (root man
ancestor), when coupled with even older
remains reportedly discovered in Kenya,
have
brought
sicientists tantalizingly close to
determining what the earliest human
ancestors looked like at the point in the
ancient past &endash; somewhere between 5
and 10 million years ago &endash; when
apes and humans diverged from a common
ancestor to take separate evolutionary
paths. Distinctly human species arose in
Africa about 2 million years ago, while
modern humans are only about 100,000 years
old.
For more
information about this discovery, read the
July 12, 2001 issue of Nature
Magazine
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