Apes have a grasping hand with an adducted thumb. Our hand is a grasping hand, clearly, and we share with this fossil a thumb that's adducted from the other digits. TATTERSALL: Well, the hands themselves look like those of a palmigrade quadruped in the trees, obviously with a grasping hand. They look more human than they thought they should, correct?ĭr. What's interesting from the accounts I've been reading about the fossil is an interesting aspect are the hands that this fossil had. This was certainly not something that you would have looked for as the intermediary between Lucy and what we would have thought her immediate ancestor to look like.įLATOW: Uh-huh. TATTERSALL: So that anything you actually know about actually forms part of a real chain. TATTERSALL: Well, the problem is that, of course, if it's a link, it's not missing. Scientists believe that humans did not descend from apes, but that apes and humans have a common ancestry. In fact, some people are even suggesting there's not much evidence for bipedality at all, although the describers are suggesting this.įLATOW: Is this the - you know, they're always looking for - I hate to say -the missing link. This new skeleton, something like a million years older than Lucy or a bit more, doesn't have all those hallmarks of bipedalism that you might expect to find in an immediate ancestor of Lucy. But definitely when she came to the ground, she walked upright. That is to say her skeleton has evidence of an arboreal ancestry, and she certainly spent a lot of time in the trees. And she is already a committed biped on the ground. And Lucy is the 3.2-million-year-old member of a species called Australopithecus afarensis.

TATTERSALL: Well, the earliest human skeleton or early hominid skeleton that we've had up to now has been the skeleton of Lucy, as you pointed out in your introduction. And it's quite different from any other early hominid that's ever been described.ĭr. It's a discovery that's been rumored for many years, but we - this is the first time we have any substantive information about it. TATTERSALL: Well, everybody is indeed very excited about this. What are the main features of the fossil that have made scientists so excited?ĭr. IAN TATTERSALL (Anthropologist Curator, American Museum of Natural History Author): Thank you.įLATOW: Tell us about this new find. He's curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, author of several books, including 'The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution,' published last year by Oxford University Press.

Joining me now to talk about the find and how it fits into the overall picture of human evolution is Ian Tattersall. The fossil has some features of modern humans, some features of modern apes, and some features that aren't present at all today.

Scientists revealed this week fossils of a skeleton that predates the well-known human ancestor Lucy by over a million years. Now meet Ardi -Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi for short. Later in the hour, we'll be talking with Lester Brown.

Lucy the missing link