Ethiopian desert yields oldest hominid skeleton

The digitally reconstructed cranium of Ardi, a female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus , is displayed along with the creature's hand bones and an artist's conception of what Ardi would have looked like. Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo led the reconstruction of the cranium from micro-CT scans of the bones, while artist Jay Matternes put flesh and fur on the creature's bones. BERKELEY — Nearly 17 years after plucking the fossilized tooth of a new human ancestor from a pebbly desert in Ethiopia, an international team of scientists today (Thursday, Oct. 1) announced their reconstruction of a partial skeleton of the hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus , which they say revolutionizes our understanding of the earliest phase of human evolution. The female skeleton, nicknamed Ardi, is 4.4 million years old, 1.2 million years older than the skeleton of Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis , the most famous and, until now, the earliest hominid skeleton ever found. Hominids are all fossil species closer to modern humans than to chimps and bonobos, which are our closest living relatives. "This is the oldest hominid skeleton on Earth," said Tim White, University of California, Berkeley, professor of integrative biology and one of the co-directors of the Middle Awash Project, a team of 70 scientists that reconstructed the skeleton and other fossils found with it.