For the past fifty years, anthropologists have had a traditional view that our ancestors arose or started to walk bipedality in the grassy savannas of Africa. This viewpoint got put to the test when a fossil was founded that showed a creature walking upright in an intermediate way living in the woodlands. This fossil that was discovered is named Ardipithecus ramidus (A. ramidus) or Ardi for short. Ardi dates back to 4.4 million years ago and is thought to be one of the earliest hominins known to mankind. Ardipithecus ramidus had to brain size of a chimpanzee, was not using tools (as seen by the record), and had a divergent big toe.
This week in our Human Evolution class, we read an article on Ardipithecus ramidus and then were asked to read another article on our own reading this hominin species. I will be discussing the article that I read this week regarding Ardipithecus ramidus called “Taphonomic, Avian, and Small Vertebrate Indicators of Ardipithecus ramidus Habitat”. This article was written in October of 2009 and in short, this article focused on reconstructing the habitat or environment of the hominin species Ardipithecus ramidus. This was done by gathering “an assemblage of >150,000 plants and animal fossils” (Antoine Louchart et. al, 2009). The assemblages range from birds to elephants to small mammals all suggesting along with isotopic evidence that Ardipithecus ramidus lived in a woodland area (Antoine Louchart et. al, 2009).
Very little is still known about this hominin species, but in another article I read regarding Ardipithecus ramidus written in 2009 as well, supported the evidence that this species once lived in a wooded biotope. This article is called “Macrovertebrate Paleontology and the Pliocene Habitat of Ardipithecus ramidus: Ardipithecus ramidus” and it was written in January of 2009. Even though this article was written before the previous one mention they both concluded based on fossil and isotopic evidence that a woodland area was lived in by the hominin species, therefore, testing the bipedal savanna hypothesis.
Something important to keep in mind is that reconstructing an ancient environment based on a vertebrate fossil can be imprecise, which is why the initial interpretation of Ardipithecus ramidus living in a wooded area was criticized (White et. al, 2009). Despite the possible impreciseness of vertebrate fossils, isotopic evidence regarding diet (from teeth) supported the hypothesis that they were in fact located in a forest-to woodland based area (White et. al, 2009). The following quote from the article written by White et al. helps show what they concluded for the Ardipithecus ramidus habitat, “... we, therefore, conclude that at Aramis, Ar. ramidus resided and usually died in a wooded biotype that included closed through grassy woodland and patches of true forest…” (White et al., 2009, pg. 92). Unfortunately, while trying to research new updated articles regarding habitat for this hominin species I did not find any from the past couple years, showing the little amount of evidence we possess regarding this species of hominin. There are still so many questions regarding Ardipithecus ramidus that still needs to be answered and hopefully, we will be able to in the upcoming years.
Link to articles:
1) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5949/66
Citations:
Taphonomic, Avian, and Small-Vertebrate Indicators of Ardipithecus ramidus Habitat. (2009). Science, 326(5949), 66–664.
WHITE, T. D., AMBROSE, S. H., GARCIA, N., GIAOURTSAKIS, L. X., HAILE-SELASSIE, Y., CLARK HOWELL, F., LEHMANN, T., LIKIUS, A., PEHLEVAN, C., AEGUSA, H., SEMPREBON, G., TEAFORD, M., GEN SUWA, VRBA, E., SU, D. F., DEGUSTA, D., BERNOR, R. L., BOISSERIE, J.-R., BRUNET, M., … FROST, S. (2009). Macrovertebrate Paleontology and the Pliocene Habitat of Ardipithecus ramidus : Ardipithecus ramidus. Science (Washington, D.C.), 326(5949), 87–93.
good stuff here. These papers are very technical but understanding the macro environment is critical to getting a handle on how the enviornment affected human origins. seems that they lived in a somewhat closed forest habitat, which is different than what was expected. super cool!
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