Read the article and write a summary in 500 to 700 words. Article 17 The Human F
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Read the article and write a summary in 500 to 700 words.
Article 17 The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old Ardi" are changing ideas about human origins. ANN GIBBONS im White is standing with a group of restless men atop Homo sapiens like us-all the way hack to Anipirhecus kad a ridge in the Afar desert of Ethiopia. A few of them are ba, one of the earliest known hominids, who lived almost pacing back and forth, straining to see if they can spot lion years ago. At last count, the Middle Awash project, which fragments of beige bone in the reddish-brown rubble below, s kes its name from this patch of the Afar desert and includes eager to start their search as children at an Easter egg bunt. At the 70scientists from 18 nacions, has found 300 specimens from seven bottom of the hill is a 25-foo-long cairn of black rocks erected different hominid species that lived here one after the ocher. in the style of an Afar grave, so large it looks like a monument to a fallen hero. And in a way it is. White and his colleagues assem best-known fossil, having made news workdwide this past tall bled it to mark the place where they first found traces, in 1994, when White and others published a series of papers detailing her of "Ardi," a female who lived 4.4 million years ago. Her skeleton skeleton and ancient environment. She is not the oldest member has been described as one of the most important discoveries of of the extended human family, but she is by far the most com the past century, and she is changing hasic ideas about how our plete of the early hominids; most of her skull and teeth as well eartiest ancestors loaked and moved Ardi, short for Ardipirhecus ramidus, is now the region's as extremely rare bones of her pelvis, hands, arms, legs and More than 14 years later, White, a wiry 59-year-old paleo have so far been found anthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley, is With sunlight beginning to bleach out the gray-and-beige ter- here again, on an annual pilgrimage to see if seasonal rains have rain, we see a cloud of dust on the horizon. Soon two new Toy- exposed any new bits of Ardi's bones or teeth. He often fires up ota Land Cruisers pall up on the promontory, and a half-dozen the fossil hunters who work with him by chanting, Hommid, Al sera menjump aut wearing Kuf caps and cotton sarongs. hominid, hominid Gof Go! Go!" But he can't let them go yet. few cnched up with belts that also hold long. curved daggers Only a week earlier, an Alisera tribesman had threatened tok Most of these clan "elders" appear to be younger than 40 -few White and two of his Ethiopian colleagues if they returned to Alisera men seem to survive to old age. these fossil beds near the remote village of Aramis, home of a Ar clan of Alisera nomads. The threat is probably just a bluffu on his hands and knees with a few fossil humters to show the White doesn't mess with the Alisera, who are renowned for tribesmen how the researchers crawl on the ground, shoulder to being territorial and settling disputes with AK-47s. As a precau shouder, to look for fassils. With Ethiopian paleoanthropolo- tion, the scientists travel with six Afar regional police offcers gist and project co-leader Berhane Asfaw translating to Amhario armed with their own AK-47s customary greetings and handshaking. White gets down and another person translating from Amharie to Afariña, White Arranging this meeting with tribal leaders to negotiate access explains that these stones and bones reveal the ancient history to the fossil beds has already cost the researchers two precious of humankind. The Alisera smile wanly, apparently amused that days out off their five-week field season. "The best-laid plans anyone would want to grovel on the ground for a living. They change every day" says White, who has also had to deal with grant permission to search for fossils- for now, But they add one paisonous snakes, scorpions, malarial mosquitoes, lions, hyenas, cveat. Someday, they say, the researchers must teach them how flash floods, dust tomadoes, warring tribesmen and nated food and wswer. "Nothing in the field comes easy" to get history from the ground. The quest for fossils of human ancestors began in eamest As we wait for the Alisera to arrive, White explains that the after Charies Darwin propased in 1871, in his book The Descent team returns to this hostile spot year after year becaase it's the of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, that humans probably only place in the world to yield fossils that span such a on aose in Africa. He didn't base his claim on hard evidence; the stretch of hbuman evolution, some six million years. In add only hominid fossils then known were Neanderthals, who had tion to Ardi, a possible direct ancestor, it is possible here to find lived in Europe less than 100,000 years ago. Darwin suggested hominid fossils from as recently as 160,000 years ago-n early hat our "early progenitors" lived on the African continent because 90Explanation / Answer
In addition to Ardi, a possible direct ancestor, it is possible here to find hominid fossils from as recently as 160,000 years ago—an early Homo sapiens like us—all the way back to Ardipithecus kadabba, one of the earliest known hominids, who lived almost six million years ago.
“Understanding what is a great ape and what is a hominid is tough.” As researchers sort out where Ardi sits in the human family tree, they agree that she is advancing fundamental questions about human evolution: How can we identify the earliest members of the human family? How do we recognize the first stages of upright walking? What did our common ancestor with chimpanzees look like? “We didn’t have much at all before,” says Bill Kimbel, an Arizona State University paleoanthropologist.
In short, they wrote that Ardi and fossils from 35 other members of her species, all found in the Middle Awash, represented a new type of early hominid that wasn’t much like a chimpanzee, gorilla or a human.
In 2000, Martin Pickford of the College of France and Brigitte Senut of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris announced their team had found an even older hominid—13 fossils representing a species that lived six million years ago in the Tugen Hills of Kenya.
“Nothing in the field comes easy.” As we wait for the Alisera to arrive, White explains that the team returns to this hostile spot year after year because it’s the only place in the world to yield fossils that span such a long stretch of human evolution, some six million years.
The first early hominid from Africa, the Taung child, as it was known, was a juvenile member of Australopithecus africanus, a species that lived one million to two million years ago, though at the time skeptical scientists said the chimpanzee-size braincase was too small for a hominid.
Starting in 1997, Haile-Selassie, now at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, found fossils between 5.2 million and 5.8 million years old in the Middle Awash.
The team proposed in the journal Nature in 1994 that the fossils—now known as Ardipithecus ramidus—represented the “long-sought potential root species for the Hominidae,” meaning that the fossils belonged to a new species of hominid that could have given rise to all later hominids.
Taken together, fossils discovered over the past 15 years have provided snapshots of several different creatures that were alive in Africa at the critical time when the earliest members of the human family were emerging.
At last count, the Middle Awash project, which takes its name from this patch of the Afar desert and includes 70 scientists from 18 nations, has found 300 specimens from seven different hominid species that lived here one after the other.
“I think it’s solid” that Ardi is a hominid, if you define hominids by their skull and teeth, says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
In 1994, 20 years after Lucy’s skeleton was discovered, a team in Kenya led by Meave Leakey (the wife of Richard Leakey) found teeth and parts of a jaw as well as two pieces of shinbone that showed the creature walked upright.
White and his colleagues assembled it to mark the place where they first found traces, in 1994, of “Ardi,” a female who lived 4.4 million years ago.
She is not the oldest member of the extended human family, but she is by far the most complete of the early hominids; most of her skull and teeth as well as extremely rare bones of her pelvis, hands, arms, legs and feet have so far been found.
When these snapshots are added to the human family album, they double the time researchers can see back into our past—from Lucy at 3.2 million years to Toumaï at almost 7 million years.
He didn’t base his claim on hard evidence; the only hominid fossils then known were Neanderthals, who had lived in Europe less than 100,000 years ago.
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