Article: Team unearths oldest known human ancestor. (Australopithecus ramidus)

Fieldwork at an Ethiopian site in 1992 and 1993 has yielded the remains of the oldest members of the human evolutionary family yet discovered. These chimpanzeelike creatures, who lived 4.4 million years ago, apparently served as a common ancestral stock for all later hominid species. Their existence supports the theory that a common ancestor of apes and humans lived in Africa no more than 6 million years ago.

The scientific team that found the new fossils, led by Tim D. White, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, assigns them to a new species, Australopithecus ramidus. For nearly 20 years, the earliest hominid remains were those of "Lucy" and ...

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