Читать книгу (101 things to know when you go) ON SAFARI IN AFRICA - Patrick Brakspear - Страница 12

Hadar in Ethiopia is the archaeological site best known for the discovery of Lucy, a three million year old fossilised specimen of Australopithecus afarensis discovered by the archaeologist Donald Johanson in 1974. He decided to nickname her "Lucy" after listening (repeatedly) to the song by the Beatles “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” while celebrating the discovery. Lucy was only 1.1m (3 feet 8 inches) tall, weighed 29 kilograms (65 lb) and looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. But although the creature had a small brain, the pelvis and leg bones appeared to have had an identical function as those of modern humans, showing with certainty that these hominids had walked erect. Australopithecus afarensis was at the time placed as the last ancestor common to humans and chimpanzees, living from 3.9 to 3 million years ago. Although fossils closer to the chimpanzee line have been recovered since the early 1970s, Lucy remains a treasure among anthropologists studying human origins.

After 17 years of research, a team of scientists led by Tim D. White from the University of California, Berkeley, published a comprehensive analysis of a prehuman hominid called Ardi in October 2009. Painstakingly pieced together from more than 100 crushed fossil fragments unearthed in Ethiopia, this female specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, for short) lived 4.4 million years ago. A more complete set of remains than the Australopithecus Lucy, Ardi is the oldest skeleton of a prehuman hominid ever found. With her long, elegant fingers, 4ft. frame and a head no larger than a bonobo's, Ardi was surprisingly ‘unchimplike’ despite being the earliest known descendant of the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimps. Also, she was capable of walking on two feet despite living in an area of woodland and forest — a finding that downplays the importance of open grasslands to the evolution of human bipedalism. The word Ardi means "ground floor" and the word ramid means "root" in the Afar language of the region.