The work supported by this NSF grant will concentrate on maximizing the knowledge which can be gained from a new and highly important collection of early hominid fossils from the Afar region of Ethiopia (Aramis). These human ancestors are the most ancient ever recovered (4.4 million years old) and are so unlike any other known human ancestors that they have been assigned to the new genus and species Ardipithecus ramidus. In addition to having extremely primitive teeth and jaws, this new species is also ecologically unusual, because it represents the first human ancestors which lived in environments dominated by closed woodland and forest species. Their cranial and dental anatomy make them the most similar to living apes of any human ancestral species, and their study promises to shed important new light on the age and causes of the separation of human and ape ancestors, an event which essentially initiated the rise of humans. Our research has two primary goals: 1) A definitive descriptive analysis of the limb bones of these new hominid fossils; 2) Functional and comparative analysis of these remains to ourselves and to other living and fossil primates.
