Pieces of an Ancestor: African site yields new look at ancient species

New fossil discoveries in eastern Africa offer a rare glimpse of one of the oldest members of humanity’s evolutionary family. More than 4 million years ago, this upright-walking hominid—dubbed Ardipithecus ramidus—lived in an area that contained a patchwork of habitats populated by a wide variety of animals, say anthropologist Sileshi Semaw of Indiana University’s CRAFT Stone Age Institute in Gosport and his colleagues.