Gentle Ardi Pre-Dates Lucy by a Million Years (Rob Waters)

From Bloomberg.com

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The 4.4 million-year-old skeleton nicknamed “Ardi” by scientists who found her remains in Ethiopia show the earliest known ancestor of humans was a lot more like us than chimps or apes.

The four-foot-tall Ardi, from Ardipithecus ramidus, was more than 1 million years older than the best-known human ancestor, “Lucy,” whose remains were found 75 kilometers (46 miles) away. Ardi, from Ardipithecus ramidus, walked on two feet and lived in groups where males cooperated rather than fought and females chose mates based on the size of their fangs, according to an analysis published today in the journal Science.

Ardi’s bones, discovered in the Afar Rift of Ethiopia and described in today’s report, challenge previous assumptions that when humans and apes split into separate species millions of years ago, the ancestor they shared was a lot like a chimpanzee. Some of the most compelling evidence was that the upper canine teeth of Ardi’s male peers weren’t as large as those of chimps.

“In Ardipithecus, the canine is no longer a weapon,” said Owen Lovejoy, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio’s Kent State University who led the team’s anatomical analyses. “So there has been an enormous social transformation from heavily male- male conflict to virtual elimination of conflict. The males are cooperative.”