Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi)
- Date
- 1994-2009 · confidence high
- Place
- Aramis, Middle Awash, Afar, Ethiopia
- Credited to
- Tim White, Gen Suwa, Berhane Asfaw, Yohannes Haile-Selassie and team
- People
- 👤 Berhane Asfaw1954–👤 Gen Suwa1954–👤 Tim White1950–👤 Yohannes Haile-Selassie1961–
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A partial skeleton from 4.4 million years ago with a grasping foot and a pelvis suited to upright walking. It revealed an ancestor unlike modern chimpanzees.
Found in 1994 and published in Science in 2009. Its degree of bipedalism and its position in the human lineage are debated.
What it led to
- a revision of the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
- the study of arboreal bipedalism
- the reconstruction of Pliocene ecology