Human are related to chimps

By Dr Elisha Mafunga

Aunt Ardi is the oldest member of the Human family tree. She lived 4.4 million years.

There is a reason to believe that chimps and human dawn of new era on straight walking and climbing evolved;  Aunt  Ardi - the oldest Citizen of Ethiopia was hairy  with long arms. she roamed the forests of Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago. The discovery reported shed light on evolution.

Aunt Ardi’s discovery is documented in detail for the first time , It highlight on a certain crucial period when we may have been  leaving in trees. There is a School  of theory  from  academics and scientists to reasonable provide  evidence that our ancestors first started walking upright in the pursuit of food and shelter during the disappearance of forest.

Aunt Ardi's Image as  revealed she was hairy ,  4ft tall and weighed 7st 12oz

Academics and Scientists believe that our earliest Ancestors learned to stand upright and walk on two legs and moved out of the forest and into the open savannas however the academic and Scientists cannot explain why Aunt  Ardi's species was bipedal while it was able to walk on two legs while at the same time it was living partly in the trees. Professor Owen Lovejoy from Kent State University  believe that the answer could be as simple as food and sex. If food and sex was the reason, Does Professor Owen Lovejoy believe that there was kind of food which  aunt Ardi was surviving on which was different from the food which Ardi survived on when she started walking on two legs, Does professor Owen believe Aunt Ardi did not have sex before she moved to the open savannas. I find this to be difficult to accept as a reason for moving into the open savannas.

  

It is acceptable that throughout evolution males have fought with other males for the right to mate with fertile females. So it is acceptable that you would  expect dominant males with big fierce canines to pass their genes down the generations. but it is also acceptable that the weaker male with small stubby teeth may believed that they can win entice a fertile female into mating by doing a favor for bringing food  in order to win sex, human history has proved that males are far more successful in providing food from the forest e.g hunting, Professor Owen Lovejoy believe if the male had their hands free to carry home items like fruit and roots if they walked on two legs.

Mr Lovejoy said this could explain why males from Ardi's species had small canines and stood upright - it was all in the pursuit of sex however I believe they were able to walk on two legs to enable then to see the enemies. If they were to walk on four legs, it would be difficult to see the enemies and the other reason was hunting for food.

Ardi  stood 4 ft tall and weighed 110 lb, she lived a million years before the famous Lucy, the previous earliest skeleton of a hominid who was dug up in 1974.Experts believe Ardi is very, very close to the 'missing link to our ancestor of humans and chimps which was thought to have lived five to seven million years ago. This is  the closest we have ever been able to come,' said Dr Tim White, director of the Human Evolution Research Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, who reports the discovery  in Science. The first fossilized and crushed bones of Ardi were found in 1994 in Ethiopia's Afar Rift.

But it has taken an international team of 47 scientists 17 years to piece together, analyse and describe the remains. 

 Digital representations of Ardi's hand

Researchers have pieced together 125 fragments of bone - including much of her skull, hands, feet, arms, legs and pelvis - which were dated using the volcanic layers of soil above and below the find. The results were surprising. Previously, scientists believed that our common ancestor would have been very chimp-like, and that ancient hominids such as Ardi would still have much in common with them.But she was not suited like a modern- day chimp to swinging or hanging from trees or walking on her knuckles. This suggests that chimps and gorillas developed those characteristics after the split with humans - challenging the idea that they are merely an 'unevolved' version

Analysis of the skeleton of Ardi, found in Ethiopia in 1994, reveals humans and chimps evolved separately from a common ancestor

Ardipithecus ramidus

- Volcanic layers around the fossil were used to date it from 4.4million years ago

- Ardi's upper canine teeth are more similar to stubby human teeth than sharp   chimpanzee teeth

- Tooth enamel analysis revealed they ate fruit, nuts and leaves

- Ardi's brain was positioned in a similar way to that of humans

- Pelvis and hip show the gluteal muscles were positioned so she could walk upright

Ardi's feet were rigid enough to allow her to walk upright some of the time, but she still had a grasping big toe for use in climbing trees.  She had long arms but short palms and fingers which were flexible, allowing her to support her body weight on her palms The upper canine teeth are more like the stubby teeth of modern people  than the long, sharp ones of chimps. The analysis of her tooth enamel suggests she ate fruit, nuts and leaves. Scientists believe she was a female because her skull is relatively small and lightly built. The teeth were also smaller than other members of the same family that were found later .Alan Walker of Pennsylvania State University, told Science: 'These things were very odd creatures. You know what Tim (White) once said: 'If you wanted to find something that moved like these things you'd have to go to the bar in Star Wars since the discovery, scientists have unearthed another 35 members of the Ardipithecus family. Ardi was found in alongside crumbling fossils of 29 species of birds and 20 species of small mammals - including owls, parrots, shrews, bats and mice. Lucy was found in Africa, thrived a million years after Aunt Ardi more human-like genus Australopithecus.'In Ardipithecus we have an unspecialised form that hasn't evolved very far in the direction of Australopithecus. So when you go from head to toe, you're seeing a mosaic creature that is neither chimpanzee, nor is it human. It is Ardipithecus', said Dr White.

                     How Ardipithecus fits into humankind's evolutionary path

 Charles Darwin whose research in the 19th century paved the way for the science of evolution, was cautious about the last common ancestor between humans and apes.

'Darwin said we have to be very careful. The only way we're really going to know what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it. Well, at 4.4 million years ago we found something pretty close to it,' Dr White added. Darwin appreciated, evolution of the ape lineages and the human lineage has been going on independently since the time those lines split, since that last common ancestor we shared some details about  Aunt Ardi in the collection of papers: Ardi was found in Ethiopia's Afar Rift Valley where many fossils of ancient plants and animals have been discovered. Findings near the skeleton indicate that at the time it was a wooded environment. Fossils of 29 species of birds and 20 species of small mammals were found at the site.

Geologist Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory was able to use volcanic layers above and below the fossil to date it to 4.4 million years ago.

Paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo reported that Ardi's face had a projecting muzzle, giving her an ape-like appearance it did, however it did not thrust forward quite as much as the lower faces of modern African apes do. Some features of her skull, such as the ridge above the eye socket, are quite different from those of chimpanzees. The details of the bottom of the skull, where nerves and blood vessels enter the brain, indicate that Ardi's brain was positioned in a way similar to modern humans possibly suggesting that the hominid brain may have been already poised to expand areas involving aspects of visual and spatial perception.

The first signs of Ardi were discovered in Middle Awash, a desert site that would have been much wetter, terming with animal life and thickly covered with trees 4 million years ago. A graduate student from the University of California at Berkley found two finger bones. Further excavation turned up pieces of pelvis, feet, hands and skull. By the end of three years, scientists realised they'd found a paleontological treasure.

The search continues for the 'last common ancestor' from which both we as modern humans and the modern chimpanzees can trace our ancestry history. Many experts think the common ancestor lived at least 7 million years ago. Research on Ardi suggests that this ancestor didn't look nearly as much like a modern chimpanzee as had been previously suspected. 

There is a school of thoughts amongst academics and scientists that they believe  that modern human and  chimpanzees have evolved significantly over the 4.4  million years

Name:                               Ardi

Nationality:                        Ethiopian

Age:                                  4.4 Million Years ?

Height                               4 Ft

Weight:                             110 lbs

Proffession                       Climbing trees

Merital Status                   not known

Continent                          Africa                                                                          

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