The last common ancestors of Chimpanzee and human [Ardi]

Chimpanzees are the closest organism to human beings both genetically and in their physique. However, chimpanzees are more efficient in their arboreal life - arboreality, human beings are walking on two legs-bipedality, no adaptation for arboreal life. So there will be a common ancestor who is capable of arboreality as well as bipedality. Which organism had such capability, is that organism alive or fossil. Is there perfect fossil evidence to prove that there is a chimpanzee-human common ancestor?.

Afar desert in Africa - northeastern Ethiopia is one of the famous fossil grounds that provided immense fossil evidence to human evolution and there is several evidence of human migration from Africa and African origin of human beings. In 1974, we got a fossil named Australopithecus afarensis. It was a female fossil short women skeleton remanence and she was n
amed as Lucy. The fossil Lucy was 3.2 million years old and she was closer to the Homo genus and the researchers say she was our ancestor from the hominidae family. However there was little evidence to prove her arboreal life. 

Later, in 1994, we got another fossil about 4.5 million years old. This fossil was also excavated from the Afar region in northeastern ethiopia. There was an international research team working on this fossil to know about the ecology and characteristics of the species to understand human evolution. After more than 15 years of deep research on fossil parts, the scientists understood the ecology and behavior of this animal. This fossil was placed in a different genus, the species name is Ardipithecus ramidus. Unlike modern human beings, A. ramidus had capability to adapt with both arboreality and bipedality. However, arboreality is not as advanced as large apes and bipedality was not as advanced as modern human beings. A hybrid mode of life of A. ramidus, is good evidence to consider this animal was a common ancestor to chimpanzees and human beings, besides A. ramidus is a hominid animal.

The investigation on A. ramidus gave several pieces of evidence to human evolution and is capable of bridging the gulf in the studies on human evolution. Studies suggest that A. ramidus  was one among the earliest human ancestors that used primitive language to communicate its proto-language, most similar vocalizations as human infants do.  We don't know the meaning of vocalizations of human infants, but they are communicating. They have some kind of meaning and our ancestors used such language to communicate with each other. This suggestion was based on the human-like skull architecture of A. ramidus. The fossil evidence aso throws light on its omnivorous nature and increased parental care and social life.

However, we still search for more evidence to understand our ancestors, human evolution and how we evolved. We can expect more excavation and advanced studies on our journey to the present stage as Homo sapiens.

Dr. Sileesh Mullasseri