Word: ramidus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Even if ramidus didn't walk upright, however, another of the recently discovered human ancestors certainly did. Less than a year after A. ramidus made headlines, a team led by Meave Leakey of the National Museums of Kenya (wife of well-known fossil hunter Richard Leakey) and Alan Walker of Pennsylvania State University revealed that it too had found fossils of an ancient human ancestor at two sites near Lake Turkana, in Kenya. Not only is the new hominid very old, dating to 4.2 million years B.P., but it is similar in some ways to A. afarensis--though clearly more...
Because the fossils were too distinctive to be included in Lucy's extended Australopithecus family, the researchers called the new species Ardipithecus ramidus (ardi means ground or floor in the local Afar language, and ramid means root). White and his colleagues have since found other ramidus fossils at their site but are giving out precious few details until they complete their methodical analysis of the bones. Says ramidus co-discoverer Berhane Asfaw of the Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa: "It will be worth the wait...
...these ideas may be in trouble. Fossilized seeds, petrified wood and animal bones found by White and his colleagues at the digging site, near the village of Aramis, indicate that it was quite densely wooded when A. ramidus lived there. If the hominid turns out to have been bipedal, as preliminary studies indicate, this could wash away existing theories--though the scientists can't say for sure until other hominid fossil sites of comparable age are found...
Precisely where do A. ramidus and A. anamensis fit into the scheme of human evolution? Leakey believes the latter is a direct ancestor of A. afarensis and thus a direct ancestor of modern humans. White and his colleagues have tentatively labeled the older ramidus a "sister species" of all later hominids; it's either our direct ancestor or a close relative of that ancestor. Whichever ramidus turns out to be, it's clear that paleontologists are closing in on the split between apes and humans. "We're in the ballpark. Five or 10 years ago, we couldn't even have...
...Ardipithecus ramidus...