Fast link to missing link
Ardi throws new light on human evolution; hobbits step out of fiction
The year 2009 belonged to Ardi. Found in 1994 near the Awash river in Ethiopia, the 4.4-million-year-old fossil of a female hominid provided deep insight into human evolution after 15 years of meticulous examination. The previously known most-ancient hominid was Lucy, which is 1.2 million years younger than Ardi — a nickname derived from the species classification Ardipithecus ramidus. Ardi has changed the way human evolution is understood. She showed there is no direct similarity between humans and modern apes and that African apes have evolved extensively since sharing a common ancestor with humans. The research has also quelled hopes of finding a human-ape missing link. An amazing chapter to the human story was added with the discovery of skeletons of a hobbit-like species on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. The one-metre tall humans lived 18,000 years ago and had for company pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons.