Ardi's place in human ancestry challenged
"Ardi," the fossil female whose discovery is thought to stretch our human ancestry back more than 4 million years, has been challenged by specialists who discount the evidence of how she lived and maintain she was never a forerunner of the human line.
Last October, Tim D. White, the noted UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist, and his colleagues announced in the journal Science their analysis of a partial female skeleton they had discovered after 17 years excavating her fossils in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert.
They named her Ardipithecus ramidus and estimated that she lived 4.4 million years ago.
The journal where the analysis appeared hailed it as the "Breakthrough of the Year."
Today that same journal is publishing two "technical comments" which raise strong doubts about Ardi's environment and her membership in the human line - as well as two responses from White and his colleagues.
Read entire article at SF Chronicle
Last October, Tim D. White, the noted UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist, and his colleagues announced in the journal Science their analysis of a partial female skeleton they had discovered after 17 years excavating her fossils in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert.
They named her Ardipithecus ramidus and estimated that she lived 4.4 million years ago.
The journal where the analysis appeared hailed it as the "Breakthrough of the Year."
Today that same journal is publishing two "technical comments" which raise strong doubts about Ardi's environment and her membership in the human line - as well as two responses from White and his colleagues.