Overview of Ardi

           This blog is going to be all about the fossil remains of the early hominin Ardipithecus ramidus nicknamed ‘Ardi’. In the coming weeks I am going to be exploring many aspects of this fossil species including in-depth looks at classification, locomotion, and behavior. Today I will be simply going over some basic information about Ardi that will provide an important foundation for later analysis. 

          Ardipithecus ramidus was first discovered in 1994 by paleoanthropologist Tim White at Aramis in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia. The partial skeleton ARA-VP-6/500 known as Ardi was announced in 2009. Ardi is estimated to by 4.4 million years old, making it one of the earliest human ancestors ever discovered. Over one hundred fossil specimens of Ardipithecus ramidus have been uncovered, but the fossil known as Ardi is the only partial skeleton of its kind (Ardipithecus). Ardi is believed to be female, based on the shape of the pelvic fragments found. While the pelvis of Ardipithecus ramidus is suggestive of bipedalism, Ardi also displays a widely divergent big toe, which is similar to the toes of contemporary great apes. The pelvis and the feet taken together is suggestive of both arboreality and bipedalism which is a topic I will go more into depth about in a few weeks. The fossil was about 120 centimeters tall and 50 kilograms (Gibbons, 2009) Ardi is neither chimp-like nor human-like but instead a unique mix of both that may answer some of the most interesting questions about how modern Homo sapiens evolved.

         This is an artist's rendition of what the complete Ardipithecus ramidus skeleton might have looked like based on fossil evidence. 

Citations:

Ardipithecus ramidus. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

<http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/ardipithecus-ramidus> . Accessed 2016 Jan 31.

Gibbons A. 2009 Oct 2. A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled. Science

326:36-40. JSTOR database <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40328554>. Accessed 2016 Jan 31.

Photo citation: 

"Ardipithecus Gesamt1" by Ori~ - Norberak egina after File:Ardipithecus Gesamt.jpg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ardipithecus_Gesamt1.jpg#/media/File:Ardipithecus_Gesamt1.jpg