Something that’s always interesting is when you find a fossil, name it, give it a genus and a species, and then you find an older species from the same genus. You then look at how the older one evolved into the newer one and how the whole genus relates to other animals.
Ardipithecus kadabba was found in Ethiopia and lived 5 million years ago. Ardipithecus kadabba is actually the second one of its genus to be found, but it was significantly older than Ardipithecus ramidus and was its ancestor. Ardipithecus kadabba was bipedal, but was also adapted to living in trees. Unlike Sahelanthropus and Orrorin, Ar. kadabba appears to have eaten nuts and harder to chew plants.
Ardipithecus kadabba also lived at a time of rapid change; global temperatures were going down and the rainforest that covered Africa a few million years before were now changing into bushland and savanna. Therefore, Ardipithecus species show more humanlike signs of being able to walk.
Ardipithecus ramidus is the descendant of Ar. kadabba. It actually has a crushed pelvis, so we don’t know if it was fully bipedal, but it shows many signs that suggest it was bipedal. Examination of the fossils might suggest that Ardipithecus ramidus had the basic communication skills of an infant, which is actually groundbreaking, considering that we can understand a lot of infants. And with that, stay tuned for more posts.
Anay Ganesh 