title: Neither chimpanzee nor human, Ardipithecus reveals the surprising ancestry of both.
abstract: Australopithecus fossils were regularly interpreted during the late 20th century in a framework that used living African apes, especially chimpanzees, as proxies for the immediate ancestors of the human clade. Such projection is now largely nullified by the discovery of Ardipithecus. In the context of accumulating evidence from genetics, developmental biology, anatomy, ecology, biogeography, and geology, Ardipithecus alters perspectives on how our earliest hominid ancestors--and our closest living relatives--evolved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology, Human Evolution Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; timwhite@berkeley.edu gsuwa@um.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Tim D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, School of Biomedical Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242-0001;
authors.forename: C Owen
authors.initials: CO
authors.lastname: Lovejoy
authors.affiliation: Rift Valley Research Service, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and.
authors.forename: Berhane
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Asfaw
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology, Human Evolution Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720;
authors.forename: Joshua P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.affiliation: The University Museum, The University of Tokyo, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku Tokyo 113-0033, Japan timwhite@berkeley.edu gsuwa@um.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Gen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Suwa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D017753:Ecosystem; D005580:Fossils; D015186:Hominidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D006801:Humans; D008124:Locomotion; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000502:physiology*; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology
keywords: Australopithecus; Ethiopia; hominid; human evolution