Owen Lovejoy is one of the authors of the paper, and he says that the fossil changes the notion that humans and chimps, our closest genetic cousins, both trace their lineage to a creature that was more like today's chimp and we'll have to be rewriting our text books soon. This is big folks. What this means is that our common ancestor was a bipedal forest forager and that chimps were an evolutionary offshoot.

That's what Kambiz Kamrani is saying. Significance:'s Ardipithecus page is up. You can get the papers free with registration.

Labels: Paleontology