"Every human been has one permanent question:" "Where do we come from?" "Where do we come from..." "It's a profound human question!" "From the beginning we humans, have seen so many differences on the rest of the animal world." "Then come Darwin..." "He concluded that human been, like all living creatures, evolved from natural selection, but he didn't the human fossils, to support his ideas..." "Now, from a remote African desert, buried from more than four million years, come the fossils evidences Darwin could only dreamed about" "ARDIPITHECUS" "DISCOVERING ARDI" "An international team of scientists has made a major discovery in Ethiopia." "We have recovered a partial skeleton dating for four million years ago," "We have something that takes us back, 4.4 million closer to a common ancestor that we share with the African apes." "Tim White is part of the Middle Awash Research Team." "We're here to beetle up our Awash studies of Ethiopia we're looking out to series of basaltic ashes volcanic explosions that covered that landscape 4.4 million years ago," "These sediments underneath those volcanic horizons where we have fossil bones fossil bones of our ancestors..." "This is an absolute unique geological extension in this area." "Letting us look deeply into the past, into our own family history as well into the evolutionary history of all the rest of the African mammals!" "The Middle Awash Research Project is looking for ancient human ancestors in Ethiopia's rugged bad-lands" "Ethiopia lies in the horn of Africa." "It's a place of towering highlands, scorching deserts, vast lakes." "This land is a cross roads of early cultures and religions" "But are far deeper roots of human existence, here." "Roots that find all living people, together." "Hadar, in north-eastern Ethiopian was the site of an historic fossil discovery, in 1974." "Researches lead by Maurice Tayed and Dan Joe Hansen found the partial skeleton of a female, human ancestor," "3.2 million years old." "The find captured the public imagination around the world..." "Scientists named the new species "Australopithecus afarensis"" "and nicknamed the skeleton, "Lucy"" "Most experts have predicted that the anatomy of the fossil as old as Lucy will fall about half way between modern humans and common ancestors we want share with living chimpanzees." "But that prediction collapsed when the Lucy skeleton was analyzed at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History" "Tim White work with Joe Hansen to interpretate the fossils along the own of Lovejoy a leading human anatomist" "But Lovejoy examines Lucy's pelvis he realized she did not mark some half way point, between humans and chimpanzees." "In fact, her anatomy showed that she walk upright, on two legs." "That made Lucy belongs to our own zoological family." "She was on our branch at the "family tree"." "A hominid!" "When I've thought that was a transitional fossil was in fact something that had been beetled a very long period of time and as a consequence, didn't really answer the question that we needed to answer." "Which is where and why did bipedality actually first evolved?" "Even if 3.2 million years old, Lucy was already, too human to answer a fundamental question:" "Why do the humans walk so differently from all the mammals?" "To find the answer, scientists realize, that they have to find, even early fossils..." "In 1981, legendary archaeologist Desmond Clark assembled a new research team." "Clark knew that the only way to find an older ancestor of Lucy, was to explore much older sediments that lies south of Hadar." "So a multinational team formed with founding from the National Science Foundation of the US." "They began to prospect the Middle Awash Valley, named from the river, flowing to the region." "Here, some sediments were millions of years, older then at Hadar." "For three field seasons, Middle Awash scientists searched east of the river, working in a sweltering heat." "And heat sometimes can get up to 44°C, in the middle of the day, no shade, and it's easy to die for heat stroke!" "For month the team scoured the bared outcrops they found hundreds of animals' fossils, but no signs of ancient hominids!" "Around the same time, tensions between local tribes began to heed up." "The area was no longer safe, so the team was forced to move their searches to the other side of the Awash River." "In 1992, we started a few work on this side, in the West side of the Middle Awash." "That thing was the new detail that changed everything..." "On December 17, the desert gave up an ancient secret, near the small Afar village, of Aramis." "We were out walking these eroding deposits, reddish-brown in color and Gen Suwa found in among a lot of monkey fossils, and fossil wood he found a molar tooth..." "And it was a molar of a... hominid." "This single fossil tooth marked the beginning of a series of discoveries that would forever change the way we think about our place in the nature." "Two days later, Ethiopian collector Alemayehu Asfaw discovered a child jaw, with a baby molar still attached another major find..." "I and Gen we've looked that molar and said:" ""Wow, we are looking at something very new, here!"" "We knew that we had something really exciting and important, so we decided to work another field season, see what else we'll find in those sediments of Aramis." "In the next season, the Middle Awash team began what's called a "one hundred per cent, collection"" "Like a forensics unit at the crime scene, they count every square inch in the blistering desert search area." "A local Afar tribe's man, Goti Hamed found something extraordinary, a set of teeth all from the same individual." "But there was more." "When were we doing the recovery operation," "Alemayehu, one of the greatest fossil collectors of all time walking over the hill and came back he have discovered an arm bone..." "The Middle Awash Team discovered a new and ancient hominid one that predated that Lucy, by more than a million of years." "In the September 1994 issue, of the journal "Nature", they announce their discovery, to the world, and named this new creature:" ""Ardipithecus ramidus"." "When we made the first announce in "Nature", in 1994, a lot of people said:" ""You know, you think you find something as complete as Lucy?"" "and I said:" ""No, I really don't think so!"" "The team had fossils teeth, and bone fragments, from 17 individuals, but no skeleton." "Enough evidences to announce a major discovery, but not enough to share much laid to the creature self." "We only had a collection of bones that I could literally hold in two hands..." "That was all we knew of this..." "Ardipithecus ramidus!" "We want that more!" "The project scientist returns to Aramis, in 1994, to continue the search..." "But finding ancient fossils, out here, was not an easy job!" "Ancient Aramis was crowded with scavengers who chew the most of animals." "The problem we had was that in a place like Aramis, the most of the bodies were immediately ravaged by hyenas." "And hominids who lived there, was no difference." "Soon that hit the ground, the hyenas that have been there, chewing the bits!" "The chances of us finding a skeleton, under these depositional conditions the chances were very, very low!" "Yohannes Haile-Selassie was a gradual student at US." "Berkley." "We were like 10 or 12 peoples here..." "We were a sword of crowding, some like crowding this area, just shoulder to shoulder, in a line" "And this was roughly about 4:30 in the afternoon, when I picked up a little fragment of a hand bone which were in this ..." "right here..." "So we have to come back the next day, and we've came back we have found more finger bones one or two, three pieces and obviously at that point, we have known that we had more than just a hand..." "As the sediment is carefully swept from the surface, the scientists uncover an embedded leg bone..." "It was so fragile, you couldn't even breathe on that!" "We had to drop preservatives onto this specimen to solidified" "Effectively turned into stone..." "And it was in this cracking sedimentary matrix, expanding and contracting when each rain stroke so this was just about lost!" "We start to think:" ""Well, maybe this tibia, belongs to the same individual..."" "...who's hand bones, we have found..." "November 9." "Heavy unseasonal rains hit the Middle Awash Valley flooding in deep mud, nailing the team to camp." "All work is stopped." "More, more rains came." "The river next our camp, was in flood." "It was in truck over bank." "You know, we've pulled the kitchen up, away from the camp, trying to save the food..." "It was days, when rains, finally end." "After the ground dry out, a little bit, and actually excavatable we started to dig into this little tiny hill, hoping that the rest of the skeleton was inside." "We think that here, we actually excavating this horizon, down through the hill, we'll find more specimens and all that we can do now..." "is to excavate and..." "hope was that..." "As the team continued to carefully prow the sediments more and more fossil bones have recovered." "At that time, the scientists had no idea that this, will be just a beginning of a 15 year of a cold case investigation of a body buried in the Ethiopian desert, for millions years." "Deep in the Ethiopian desert, the Middle Awash team continued the recovery operation, and more and more fossils emerged from the little hill, at Aramis." "Piece after piece..." "we lifted out..." "We've got the pelvis." "It was broken, in pieces." "But we've got a lot of it!" "We've got the base of the cranium, we found the lower jaw, we found the ankle bone, we found foot bones, we found other leg bones, we found arm bones..." "We had a partial skeleton!" "By the end of the 1994 field season, the team had found an amazing 90 fossil bones, teeth and bone fragments, in a little hill of Aramis." "They all belong to a single Ardipithecus individual." "The scientists nicknamed it, "Ardi", the creature who lived and died, more than a million years, before Lucy." "Could these fossil remains now safely wrapped in plaster jackets answer the questions that Lucy could not?" "Could the Ardipithecus help to saw the riddle of where the humans come from and why we seem so different from other mammals?" "Imagine looking for a missing person in the vastness of Africa a person dead from 4 million years and covered by tones of sediments, hundred of meters deep..." "Imagine all that, and you'll begin to understand how hard it was to find the skeleton as old as Ardi's." "But the Middle Awash Research Team did just that, discovering the fossil remains of Ardipithecus ramidus deep in the Ethiopian Desert." "Hominids are incredibly rare." "They were very rare on the landscape;" "they have very long life span, so few of them dies and end up on carcasses on the landscape." "They were very smart, smarter than most mammals, so you'll not find them trapped in the sediments..." "So they're extremely rare!" "It was a swap of surprise to us to find so many pieces of a single individual, in this small area, because in the fossil record, that usually doesn't happened!" "These delicate fossil bones of Ardipithecus, now become precious hard evidences, but evidences of what?" "!" "After a long and exhausting field season, the team had excavated dozens of pieces of this new skeleton." "But one crucial part of Ardi, still eluded them..." "We wanted a face!" "We wanted to have the whole cranium together, to see what this creature look like!" "But in days of returning at the excavation site in the next field season, they've got their whish!" "...The upper jaw, the side of the eye socket, the frontal bone, above the eye socket, and the other side of the skull were all uncovered." "All in different pieces, all shattered them out, all very crushed, all extremely fragile..." "If you'll lied to a forensic case, it was case were you had to do a lot of work to put this all back together to get to the individuals face, and indeed that's was we proceeded to do..." "Even all this search for more remains continued one key question had yet to be fully answered by the project geologists:" "exactly, how old were this fossils?" "This Ardi skeleton, was so ancient, it's fossilized bones, no longer contained any material useful for dating." "We don't date the bones them selves." "So we lie on geologists to give us dates for these rocks that are above and below the fossils that we're finding." "But not just any rocks would do." "For millions of years, the fractured crust beneath Africa's Great Rift Valley has produced volcanoes." "Ash layers and lava plows for more recent eruptions cover the rift floor today, just as they covered the ancient landscapes, long ago." "The geologists can identify in traces, each layer of ash through its unique geochemical fingerprint." "At Aramis, they've got lucky!" "Instead of fossils not just lying just in a single layer they were actually sandwiched between two layers of ash." "Was a nice coincidence that those two volcanic rocks blocked that segmentary sequence and so I collected several samples from that area, for dating." "Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel analyses the Aramis samples, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory." "First, he pulverizes and refines them." "Next, he separates and extracts tiny crystals and sharps of volcanic glass." "These materials contents trace amounts of argon gas, produced by the radioactive decay" "The gas has gradually built up inside the rock, ever since the eruption." "WoldeGabriel now sends the processed samples to the doctor Paul Renne, at the Berkley Geochronology Center." " Hey Paul!" " The samples are ready!" " From Middle Awash?" "!" "Yes, I just looked at them." "Look great!" "Renne uses a laser to melt the ancient volcanic glass and crystal fragments." "This releases the built up argon gas." "By measuring the amount of gas, Renne can determine the samples age." "The more argon gas, the older rock sample is." "His results date the Aramis fossils more precisely that anyone expected." "We can not tell the differences of age between the units of above the Ramidus fossils and the units that were below." "So in each case, we've get the age 4.4 million of years." "And those two results are individually indistinguishable." "We estimated that we know the age of Ramidus to a pin above of 50.000 years." "So it's 4.4 million, closer main about 50.000 years." "That's very good!" "That's above as good as it gets." "At 4.4 million years old, the fossil hominid skeleton founded at Aramis is the earliest ever discovered." "These fossilized bones belong to a creature that lived and died 100.000 generations, before Lucy was even borne." "All that time has taken a heavy toll on the fossil skeleton." "Even some of the teeth have been crushed and distorted." "The laboratory extraction and analysis of the fossils will be slow and meticulous." "It will take more than a decade of painstaking research by a huge team of scientists, to see what this creature look like and to understand how it made its move through it's now vanished world." "Most of us know our parents, our grandparents, even our great-grandparents..." "But go back 5 or 10 generations, and many of us lose their individual genealogies..." "Few of us are able to trace their family, into the Middle Ages." "Some 300 generations separates living Egyptians, from their ancestors, who built the Great Pyramids." "Now, on a small path from Ethiopian Desert, an international team of scientists has found the remains of a creature, a thousand times older than the pyramids." "The crushed and broken skull and the pelvis of this partial skeleton, could help reveal, how old seven billion others, had come to be human." "At the end at each field season, the researchers take the fossils finds back to Ethiopian National Museum, in Addis Ababa, to safe keeping, cleaning and analysis." "The hominid fossil collection here is one of the most impressive of the world." "Now, each of the fragile new fossils will have to be free from the sediments that surround them." "The scientists take extreme care not to damage the fossils, during the cleaning processes." "Hours, sometimes weeks, are spent, working at a single piece." "We couldn't even lift the bones, without putting plaster jackets around" "This is one of the ribs." "We used a lot of the hardener in the field;" "to cement this rib in the matrix and place as wouldn't move in the transport to the lab..." "Now, to study the rib and to piece the very best pieces back together again we have to remove this matrix." "The time invested in this stage project is remarkable." "The painstaking work to safely free the fossil bones from the surrounding matrix takes three and a half years." "With the fossil bones exposed and stabilized, the researchers can now conduct the "postmortem" investigation." "They wanted to discover as much as they can, about what this creature was like, when was alive." "So is someway like a "paleo-autopsy"..." "And to run their autopsy, one of the first things that you want to establish, is is this a male, or a female?" "So for that we can go to the canine teeth." "We have this complete lower dentition." "The smallest canine of any Ardipithecus found, is in this individual." "Very strong indication, that she was a female." "We know that she was an adult, when she died, because her molars were fully erupted and were hardly in where, so a young adult female." "It been gain as the coldest of the cold cases, but now, facts from Ardi's life, slowly began to emerge." "We know details of her biology..." "For example, in one of her foot phalange..." "This is a toe bone." "We have an infection that persisted in this individual." "Probably for weeks and month..." "Limiting her ability to move around the landscape at sometimes probably..." "But the bone healed over." "Resorbed and healed over." "This is a pathology that this individual probably survived." "But what about the survival of the fossils, themselves?" "!" "To study Ardi thoroughly, researchers will have to handle them over and over, again." "To protect the precious originals, plaster copies are made, replicas accurate to at an attempt of a millimeter" "Ardi's fossils bones have made an incredible journey through time, one that's not over yet." "In 2003, Ethiopian Government aloud to the original skeleton, to travel to Japan, for a new phase analysis." "The fossils are under the protection of dr." "Yonas Beyene." "Among of project scientist Gen Suwa, Beyene arrives at the Tokyo airport, with a priceless cargo, in a sturdy blue suitcase." "These fossils are the result of ten years of intensive field research, by researchers of all over the world." "And traveling with them is now, giving a sensation that it's something, which close deep into your spine." "If something happens, you are not losing only some precious materials, but a precious also to science." "Ardi and their two companions heads to the University of Tokyo." "Here, Suwa will prove the skeleton, with one of the powerful CT-scan machines." "This equipment will let them make high resolution slices through Ardi's bones and teeth, without damaging the fossils." "They will be able to digitally reassemble Ardi's crushed skull and even measure the size of the brain." "They also looking for clues to the greatest question of all... did Ardipithecus walk on two legs?" "Even since Darwin, the idea that we humans evolved from an ancient ancestor, who looked and acted much like a modern chimpanzee, has been widely accepted." "It seems to make sense that millions of years ago, there was some kind of transitional chimp like species, that walked on two legs and stands up of own force." "Were the Ardi fossils, from that creature?" "Clues from Ardi's pelvis, may help answers this question." "For early investigation Lovejoy identify distinctive clue on the intact front edge of Ardi's pelvis." "A small feature, with big implications." "It was a shape common for all hominids and was clear evidences that Ardipithecus didn't move on all fours, but walk up right, on two legs..." "She was bipedal, like us!" "Following up this early sign that Ardi was bipedal, the team cleaned and studied more, the badly broken pelvis." "Separating the original fossil fragments and putting them back together by hand, was out of the question." "They were simply too many and they were all too fragile to handle." "You say that matrix will crack, when we will open that up..." "Now, Lovejoy realizes he will need to make an accurate restoration of Ardi's pelvis" "To do this, he will use his knowledge of primate anatomy along of a cutting edge technology, called "micro CT-scan"." "Suwa's laboratory in Tokyo is one of the few in the world, equipped for this task." "In December 2003," "Suwa and Beyene arrives at the University of the Tokyo Museum with Ardi's fragile bones, intact" "Hey, nice one, finished!" "Using the Museum CT-scanner Suwa will take eight weeks, to produce thousands of high rays scans of Ardi, the most comprehending mapping of an ancient hominid skeleton, ever attempted." "The team wants to learn as much as possible, about Ardi's skeleton." "The scanner will aloud them to study both the inside and the outside of each fossil bone and tooth." "Here's Ardi's 4.4 million year old molar seen from the surface and scanning down, into the fossil tooth." "Suwa will work 16 hour days, to make thousands of these precision scans, pushing both himself and the technology, to the limit." "...aspects of this specimen..." "...where the joints surfaces are joining each other..." "And now, 15 years after Ardi's pelvis was unearthed in Ethiopia, the scientists long investigation is finally helping to answer the question of how this strange new hominid..." "...moved." "If I compare, the pelvis of a chimpanzee, to Ardipithecus pelvis, what you see, a dramatic set of differences of all the anatomical characters." "This is the pelvis of an animal that locomoted bipedal it wasn't just so highly evolved in doing so, as like Lucy." "The pelvis reconstruction has confirmed, that Ardipithecus was bipedal a major step forward in investigation." "Another key part of Ardi's anatomy, is her skull." "An accurate reconstruction of the skull could provide the scientists with a number of insights, including the size of Ardi's brain." "Once again, the original fossils in Africa are the starting point." "And once again, the collaboration will spend the globe." "In Aramis, the team has recovered 34 separated pieces of Ardi's skull," "Including her jaws and teeth, but many parts, have never found." "In Tokyo, Suwa will reconstruct the Ardi skull, using CT-scans filling in missing parts, digitally." "In Berkeley, California, White will also rebuild the Ardi's skull, but to make his version, he will use plaster casts of the fossils." "Working this way, they're being able to crosscheck the results, independently." "Suwa scans cranial fragments, then he uses the CT-slices to properly restore each bone." "Front teeth are added, and the face of Ardipithecus began to emerge." "The digital reconstruction process will take years." "Final a composite CT-symbol is output of the computer as a 3D plaster version, called the "stereolithography"..." "Suwa sends it to Tim White, in Berkeley." "So this restoration was accomplished digitally, in Tokyo." "This restoration was accomplished physically here, in Berkeley." "When we compare those two independent reconstructions we'll see effectively, the same face..." "The scientists have now reassembled the face of this enigmatic creature seen for the first time, in 4.4 million years." "She had a very small brain, and yet her pelvis shows:" "she walked bipedal." "Ardi seems to have foots in two worlds." "What other secrets the rest of her strange skeleton hold?" "When we're crossing the street or stepping down, on the surface of the Moon One small step for man We humans, do it on two feet" "In 1969, Neil Armstrongs' footprint on the lunar surface became symbols, of our scientific progress." "Nine years later, the discovery of a series of fossilized footprints in Tanzania revealed that our ancient ancestors, made a giant leap on their own..." "What came to be known as "the Laetoli footprints", were made by members of Lucy's species." "They established that hominids were already walking upright, on human-like feet some 3.7 million years ago." "But what about Ardi's feet?" "They're near a million years older then Laetoli footprints." "What can they tell us, about the beginnings of bipedality?" "Well, cleaning the Ardipithecus skeleton, the scientists were standing to see the shape of a bone near the center of Ardi's foot..." "The real shocker was the medial cuneiform of the foot..." "Because it told us that we had a grasping foot, just like we see at the chimpanzee..." "This bizarre combination of a primitive grasping big toe, in the foot of a biped, was unprecedented." "The skeleton curious mixture of primitive and derived traces revealed that Ardi was neither chimp, nor human." "She was an evolutionary mosaic." "Ardi's chimp-like big toe was just one of the many surprises that were found, during the investigation of the skeleton." "Another would come from the bones that made upper-hand." "Ardi's hands were remarkably complete." "Even tiny sesamoid bones that once rested in the tendons of the fingers were recovered." "If the earliest hominids like Ardipithecus evolved from ancestors who walked on their knuckles, the way that living chimpanzees do, using Ardi's reassembled hand the project scientists would now be able to test, this hypothesis." "One of the important things about human evolution, that Ardipithecus informs us about, is not only in the foot and the pelvis and the back and the parts, but in particularly the hands..." "And the hands of the chimpanzees and humans are quite distinct" "Chimps feed on ripe fruits." "To get to it, they often climb large trees." "Up in the branches, they often suspend themselves using their long forelimbs and stepped wrist joints." "Down on the ground, same stepped wrists, acts like shock-absorbers, at the base of the long hands." "There, they practice a peculiar form of locomotion:" "called "knuckle walking"." "Most scientist predicted that deeper the fossil record went, the more chimpanzees-like, our ancestors would be." "If humans are descended from a chimp-like ancestors there are to be traces of this "knuckle walking" anatomy, in the structure of these Ardi's fossilized hand bones, but they aren't any." "It was quite obvious the met that we found the major elements of the Ardipithecus hand that it was not..." "...a "knuckle walker"..." "The metacarpals, the long bones you see here, are quite short." "And if we rotate a little bit and we look at the surface of the top of the metacarpal the elements that we expect to find, in a "knuckle walker" are not present." "So, this bone is short and the whole head morphology is completely different." "...And it wasn't until we extracted the hand bones and studied the hand bones that we came to realize that this is not a hand of... an ape..." "This is compelling evidence that our common ancestor with chimpanzees did not walk on his knuckles." "This was a completely new animal." "It took years, as a consequence, to look at all the details, at things like the wrist bones, to figure of all out, because we never seen anything like this, before." "Ardipithecus did not evolve from an ancient chimpanzee." "This conclusion based on new fossil evidences, has overturned a concept so wide spread, that many people just assumed, that was true." "From the beginning, we've used chimpanzees and gorillas as our ascendants, if you will, for the last common ancestors." "We can't do that anymore." "Ever since Darwin we fall into the idea that humans evolved from an ancient-like chimp creature that's because modern chimps seems to share a lot of anatomy and behavior with humans..." "So the idea that we evolved from something-like chimps, seems to make sense but now, the discovery of Ardipithecus, shows that this idea, is totally and completely... wrong!" "It's an early transitional bipedal form, with small canines, a completely unique and unexpected primate, that no one couldn't know, until we found the skeleton, at Aramis!" "Ardi's skeleton shares new lights, on how humans evolved but what influenced and shaped that evolution?" "The Middle Awash investigators will not finished make discoveries." "The team would go on to also test another fundamental assumption about her origins." "Scientist had along predicted that the early hominids evolved bipedality, on African's open savannas." "But without fossil evidences, this hypothesis has been impossible to test." "Was Ardi's world really as savanna or wasn't something else?" "Now, the most extensive investigation of plant and animal fossils in the history of whole anthropology, will answer this question..." "...in a very unexpected way." "The search for fossils in Aramis is physically demanding and often, dangerous work." "Patience and determination makes all the difference." "Time not have any meaning for us." "The only thing that we have to limit is the amount of stand up to rest time that we have sleep, and that's the only thing." "And time does end up..." "The Middle Awash researchers have spent over a decade examining and reconstructing Ardi's partial skeleton." "During the same period, a parallel Afar's team was under way an exhausting global study that challenges assumptions about how and where early hominids aroused." "The team set up to investigated the community of plants and animals that lived in Ardi's ancient world of Aramis." "We can't see an Ardipithecus, today..." "We can only see it through its skeleton remains..." "But we can see its world;" "we can reconstruct its world... we can understand its world through using this..." "very, very rich paleontological record..." "For nearly a century, it's been assumed that the earliest hominids lived and evolved in a savanna grass-land." "The Aramis site gave the Middle Awash scientists a unique chance, to test that hypothesis with hard evidences." "The scientists continued to return in the harsh Ethiopian desert, year after year, even after the Ardi's skeleton was found." "Their objective was to recover as many fossils as they could, of the plants and animals who lived with Ardi." "But the fossils of Aramis are mixed with rocks and other debris that are virtually, the same color." "...And so are the snakes..." "We had dozens of instances, in which our fossil collectors came literally eye balls, to eye balls with these highly venomous snakes." "This is one of the dangers one of many dangers of working in a remote area..." "like this..." "Through this systematic search in Aramis, thousands of fossils have been recovered." "And in each year, the seasonal rains expose even more fossils, including other primates." "Look at this!" "That's an immature monkey upper jaw, dropped out the ground here 4.4 million years ago." "It's a baby monkey." "Dentition goes right together, just like that." "One of reasons that people are interested in monkeys that's that they are the other primates that you find at the hominid sites." "They can tell you a bit about the pill of environment, what going on at that time." "The monkey as can tell us quite a bit, were they arboreal monkeys ...or they're terrestrial." "Many remains of arboreal monkeys were found at Aramis, helping to make the case that this was an environment pilled... with trees..." "The scientists also combed the sediments for fragments of mal sized creatures or micro mammals." "Back at camp, excavated chunks of sediments are dissolved into thick mud and then run to thieves of sub millimeters sized nosh." "As water run through the mix, fragments of bones and teeth are separated." "Later they'll be sorted and identified in a lab." "Reconstructing Ardi's ecology full eventually involved over 40 scientists, from 16 countries, representing 30 different institutions, from around the world." "They even studied the ancient soil that she walked on, and profiled the chemical composition of her teeth, to learn about her habitat and her diet." "For more than ten years, the field team has collected fossils from the same sediments that also buried Ardi in Aramis." "At Ethiopia's National Museum, experts sorted, analyzed and cataloged thousands of remains from the now vanished, world of Ardipithecus." "A porcupine, a mongoose, a branch of birds, all kinds of monkeys, pigs, bovines..." "Even finger bones of micro mammals, like shrews and bats have recovered..." "These tiny bits of evidences will join thousands of other clues." "This is the lower jaw of a fruit-bat who flew in the skies over Aramis, 4.4 millions years ago, and when if looked down, to see Ardipithecuses." "The fruit-bat would have seen something else as it flew over Ardi's world:" "trees..." "lots of trees..." "These fossilized seeds felt from trees that once grew not on an African savanna, but in dense woodland..." "This came out on the last rain." "What we have here, are fragments of fossilized wood." "We have not seen this fossilized wood coming out from this sand kind sediments beyond the mammals fossils so, in the last rain this week, we starting find a lot of plants that were associated with this organisms, 4.4 millions years ago." "For near a century it's been widely believe that humans' evolved bipedality in African opens savannas." "Now this long weld savanna idea has been overturned by a decade of field work, in an avalanche of solid evidences." "So all theories have been knocked out by new discoveries, from the Middle Awash, so is very critical in terms of what we've doing here and what we're finding." "The investigators have now established ancient Ardi's habitat, but what about Ardi herself?" "If all her parts:" "skin, muscles, bones and teeth were restored and reassembled, what would this strange African creature have look like?" "To bring Ardi back to life, the project now turns to one of the world greatest natural history artist, Jay Matternes." "It's a privilege..." "and a challenge..." "The science team has now spent over a decade examining the Ardipithecus skeleton, piece by piece." "Now it's time to put all the pieces together, by harnessing science to art." "This process goes back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci, who created life like human images, based on his own detailed anatomical drawings." "Now, using the same technique, one of today's most accomplished natural history artists, takes on a creature, that da Vinci couldn't never imagine." "For illustrator Jay Matternes, the challenge of creating the first life-like scientific drawings of Ardi, is become a passion." "By now this Ardi is has consumed all my attention because is so demanding..." "And is, I say, such an outstanding fossil this significance of what she is is profound." "Project scientists have asked Jay to create the official scientific portraits of Ardi." "His drawings will be released to the public and scrutinized by a countless scientists around the world, as well." "So accuracy is the absolute priority." "Over the years, Matternes was collaborated with leading scientists to create life-like scientific based drawings of human ancestors, including Lucy's species at Laetoli and at Hadar..." "Matternes often functions like a sketch-artist in a criminal investigation, but the drawings of Ardipithecus, will demand a much higher level of details." "Ten years into the project, Matternes pays a visit to Owen Lovejoy's lab, at Kent State University." "To begin reassembling this intriguing creature on paper, they'll use the high precision plaster casts of the Ardipithecus skeleton." "We take that piece..." "...and align with that one..." "He is the equivalent of a supercomputer into which years and years, primates structures have been pulled and recorded and out of which comes almost a perfect image." "Matternes begins his portraits of Ardi by creating highly detailed of drawings each of the dozens of individual fossil casts the fragments of her skull her crushed pelvis her grasping toe hand bones..." "This staggering body work amounts of hundreds of pieces of paleo-art each one, precisely rendered, at full scale." "Jay's also include reconstructing on paper, tissues that they never found from bones to ligaments, muscles, the skin and finally:" "to Ardi's hair and eyes." "My part is to interpolate between what is there and what is missing and also to correct for any distortions." "We only one cervical vertebra nothing has remained of the scapula so we have to infer that, from modern humans and apes." "The scientists' team guides Jay on how best to fill up gaps between undercovered bones." "Gradually, this draw of Ardi's skeleton, begins to take shape." "Because of his artistic skills and because of the anatomical knowledge, we can take something like a partial foot and looking at that foot to describe, interact with him, as to what's present and what's missing" "and that based on our joined anatomical knowledge, replacing the missing parts." "Literally hundreds of e-mails fly back and fore between artist and scientist." "Many with revised anatomic drawings attach." "We've got through drawing after drawing, after drawing, as we discovered additional aspects of the skeleton." "As Tim cleaned more and more parts of it, and as Tim and Gen and I completed the reconstruction of those parts." "Each time that we did that, it changed a bit." "At Kent State University, Lovejoy reviews Jay's latest drawings." " The extended..." " Right." " ...rib cage the shoulders have been elevated over the previous version..." "The hand was much too big!" "Look, you have to mirror image." " Yes, right!" " Now you put there on dawn!" "It's much more gracile as it should bee, yes." "Much more forthright." "The toe looks small, because phalanges are too long..." "Yes!" "And is astonishing small!" " Yes." " I mean... just full of surprises!" " Yes." "So it's a very odd looking creature." " And remarkably non-chimpanzee like!" " Yes." "Every bone and joint is carefully examined, to ensure the accuracy of Ardi's skeletal portraits." "Trapezoid..." "Yes, what's the next step, do you think?" "Next step would be to..." "to put a skin on her all the trend aids:" "hair... and eyelashes... and such..." " Take it together, here..." " Yes." "Matternes would work for over two years, adding muscles and skin, to Ardi's body." "A vision of what..." "she may have looked like..." "Far from Ethiopia, far for the back breaking field working from the Midde Awash, and the long nights pouring over shattered fossils" "Ardi's portraits are now completed in a quiet Virginia studio." "Drowned in chuckle, this fusion of art and science, resurrects this creature from the inside out, from the skeleton to her muscles, and finally, to her outer features:" "her face and her eyes." "With her long arms and grasping big toes" "Ardipithecus finally emerges from the shadows of deep time." "Ardipithecus was a biped, but a very primitive biped, a biped who could grasp with its foot." "That's different from any other mammal, that's ever been found!" "But what was that strange bipedal animal with grasping feet look like, when walked?" "Discovery Channel film-makers had come up with a strategy, to find out." "They will use digital tools, developed by Hollywood Studios, to help visualize how Ardi might it moved, through her ancient world." "Ardipithecus seems to be a paradox:" "a bipedal hominid, with a grasping foot and a chimp sized brain..." "Here we have a creature that was unanticipated by science." "The evidences for it could only come from the fossil record!" "Ardi's skeleton reveals a strange new creature, one that walks on two feet." "And odd feet they were!" "The one of the interesting things that we have to deal with and the most difficult is the foot." "And at first we thought that thing was a kind of free great toe..." "The process of recreating Ardi's movements begins at a company of Southern California, called Lifemodeler." "The organizations like Lifemodeler have spent years building up extremely sophisticated programs" "that can simulate human motion." "So we were lucky, because the creature that we are looking at has many elements in common, with modern humans." "One of the problems that we've got is how to recreate it, in a way that fit value." "Replicating human motions with computers is Lifemodeler specialty." "These models simulate the dynamics of muscles, bones and joints." "This have been used to help a prosthetics company, designing a kneel replacement." "Lifemodeler also works with athletes to help improve their performances." "We can look at a very complicated motion, like sports, such as tennis, and recreate that with a biomechanics simulation model, and retrieval other information from that." "So what would happen if the same technology was applied to Ardi's very unusual feet?" "!" "Lovejoy wants to work with Lifemodeler to see if they can simulate how Ardipithecus might would walk." "We can take those data that we draw from the skeleton, and from Jay and from Gen and put them all together and give them to a Lifemodeler..." "We know what elements are shared and what elements are not shared, for the Ardipithecus and modern humans." "So they can take their programming, they evolve into a previous existing form, and tell us how this creature moved." "But this 4.4 million years foot, is not like anything like model, that they ever seen." "With guidance from Lovejoy" "Shawn's team will need to modify their human model to match Ardi's unique anatomy." "We can test things like grasping functions, which you see right now." "But from all that's we have here, it's a mix function." "we have a foot that has to be grasping in the arboreal environment, in trees, but in revert, to toddle off, in walking." "The second metatarsal is essentially, the central axis of the foot, it's the major propelling element of the foot, in this animal, and not in human and it's not in chimpanzee." "This is a totally unique animal!" "This model will help the scientists see how Ardi might walked up right, despite the grasping toe" "Seeing Ardi's legs move, is one thing." "What about of the rest of her body?" "If we could go back in time, into that ancient African woodland, what would Ardi, have look like?" "To find out, Lovejoy and the Discovery Channel film-makers, will combine the Matternes' draws of Ardi's skeleton, with Lifemodler simulations and then, applying some Hollywood technical magic." "The process about to begin is called "motion capture"." "It's used by features film-makers in video game producers to create digital characters that moves like-real humans." "That we do, only articular surfaces." "Since that is no video analog for Ardipithecus," "Lovejoy will use the next best thing, Jade Quon, a stuntwoman, who's about Ardi size." "After the session, Jade's proportions will be adjusted, to exacted match Ardi's." "Never had it like that!" "Yes, all new." "That's way I've keep looking right that, look over there!" "Jade's suite is studded with reflecting markers." "Her motion is captured by an array of 120 cameras connected at a bank of computers, resigned to capture every movement from every possible angle." "Because you'll gone be a walk, you'll not running." "And you know, you'll not have to band the knees so much..." " Yes, a kind a state..." " Yes." "Lovejoy coaches Jade for the session, using his extensive knowledge of Ardi's anatomy and habitat." "Keep close please, roll cameras!" "On rolling!" "Now walk, really fast!" "Jade's movements are translated into data, in real time." "Oh, that's was a good tape!" "We can do that to receipt a tape, if something wrong..." "The foot that we looking at, of Ardipithecus, is no living analogy there is not something like it..." "But they are elements of our own hand and of our own feet, into the motion patters, that we can combine, and in that way, achieve something that look like the Ardipithecus foot movements." "Now, working begins at fully detailed animation." "To complete the process, the animation team will have to add a one final dimension:" "the living world that surrounded Ardipithecus as she walked some 4.4 million of years ago." "The hard fossil evidence is now on hand, but it seems to pose more questions, that answer." "Ardipithecus brain were small, the size of a chimpanzee's." "Their big toes aloud their feet to grasp tree branches." "But their short palm and flexible wrists shows that these creatures never walk on their knuckles, as chimps do, today." "The shape of the pelvis, confirms that Ardi was some kind of early biped." "Since the time of Darwin, two fundamental questions in human evolution had challenge researchers:" "how and way are ancestors began to walk habitual on two legs?" "The Ardipithecus discovery now represents the earliest hominid skeleton." "But Ardipithecus is a creature so new, so unexpected that visualizing is difficult, even to scientist!" "The Discovery Channel film-makers will use digital animation to try bringing Ardi, back to life." "Motion capture session in Hollywood has provided data to help animate a digital Ardi." "Now, the detailed anatomical drawings, created by Jay Matternes, are transformed into tridimensional digital images." "After month of work, motion captured data are finally applied to the static digital skeleton." "Placing Ardi's body in her lost world will be the final step." "The artists overlaying on evidences from the groovy field work, done at Aramis to fill in details the natural environment." "This mountain of data is used to digitally recreate the woodland environment of Ardipithecus." "The final step is to incorporate the digital Ardi." "When we first see the Ardipithecus is striking to us, because here's an animal curiously primitive, and yet it's embarked upon a carrier of walking bipedal." "Bipedality is so common to us;" "it is so..." "...second nature!" "That we can to think that's a very natural form of locomotion." "It is in fact, a very strange and odd form of locomotion." "Roughly seven billion of us live on the planet today." "With over half their number settled in towns and huge cities." "It seems like humans are every where, so we seldom stop to reflect that, we how truly odd mammals we are or question the truly weird way of we walk." "If you go to New-York and walk on streets of New-York, and looking around you don't any think about the fact these all are walking biped... and yet this form of locomotion is absolutely unique in the animal kingdom." "As we track humans back through time into the fossil record and all of the individual special characters begin to drop out, if you get to very bottom, is simply bipedality that becomes to define the character of being human." "Bipedality is traditional the fore mark of, being human." "So the very definition of humanity or the family name "hominidae"" "was defined of the fact that our earliest ancestors were able to walk on two legs." "For scientists, bipedality is always seen the most puzzling part, of human biology." "It's a terrible form of locomotion." "So you're forced in the question:" ""Why did this animal, ever adopted this peculiar form of getting around?" "!"" "No other mammal has ever become a bipedal walker,and for a very good reason:" "a four legged animal has far more speed and agility why slower bipeds, could it been "easy meals" for the hungry carnivores..." "There no sure of the ideas by why bipedality evolved in hominids." "For decades, bipedality was thought to have evolved that our ancestors moved into the grass-lands savannas of Africa but the evidences now shows that Ardipithecus was a biped who lived and died in the wood-land, not in savanna." "Most theories about walking on two legs has focused on a single isolated advantage, like the ability to reach up and pitch fruits, look over tall grass, or to stand up, and adopt a threatening post." "Bipedality inner in it self, could not solve any particular single issue it must be part of a larger and most important adaptation" "And that's the mystery of the human evolution:" "figuring that, what that adaptation was." "It's now clear, that million of years ago;" "bipedality did evolve in our African ancestors." "So walking up-right must have provided some huge biological advantage at the earliest hominids." "Bipedality was a positive, that out waded all the negatives." "What advantage did it bring to our earliest ancestors?" "In the evolutionary shift stakes Darwin knew the winning ticket was leading the most successful out springs, as human had." "Our closest relatives, the great apes have not kept up." "and today, they're on the brink of extinction." "Gorillas and chimps occupies little patches of lay aside forests, but they are not successful, they are on decline or hominids are all over the world." "Hominids became enormous reproductive and successful and what that signifies is the master undergone a major shift, in their reproduction strategy." "An intriguing clue to that shift in their reproductive strategy would come from the many fossil teeth found at Aramis." "Just the evidence investigators needed!" "Males of all living and fossil apes shares one very distinctive trait:" "in order to compete with one another, they have very large, projecting, or we've can call "honing" or "sharpening" canines." "The upper and lower canines, when they occluding against each other, actually sharpening keep them in excellent shape, as aggressive tools." "Canine teeth from many Ardipithecus individuals were found in Aramis." "And all of them were small and blunt." "Because all living and fossil male apes have large, sharp, projecting canines' teeth, it's likely, that our distant ancestors, also had them." "But Ardi, did not." "Even the largest male canines in the Ardi's species, were very small, compared to any fossil or modern ape." "Ardipithecus had seen canine reduction." "At 4.4 millions ago, Ardipithecus had evolved two big changes:" "bipedality and small male canines." "Taken by them selves, either change seems to be a huge disadvantage." "So we're face to put those critical clues together and explaining it, some how." "What could "walking on two legs" have to do with small canine teeth, in those earliest hominids?" "One possible explanation comes from studies of primates' behavior and anatomy." "In Ardipithecus, canines have dramatically reduced and this tells you that some how there's made a major change in social behavior." "In all other primates, males use their canine teeth as weapons, threatened and fighting each other." "They fight over females who show visible signs that they ovulated." "Male Ardipithecus canines are greatly reduced, like ours." "If male canines are reducing, it means that females are choosing males with smaller canines." "What could a male be doing, that will make a female want that to have that out spring of that male, rather than those of the more competitive and more aggressive males?" "One possible answer is by pairing with males with a dependable source of food, females had more time and energy, devoted to the youngsters and to have more of those off-springs during their life time." "This is to what winning the evolutionary shift stakes and all about:" "reproduction and surviving." "The formation of what scientists call a "pair-bond", between males and females, would it been based, in the exchange of food and sex." "With this kind of system, males could it forage separately, from females and their infancies." "The all important reproductive advantage would have gone to those males who collected and carry high value food to their mates and their dependent young, whom they're like their fathers." "Natural selection, would it favored those who could walk further on two legs, carrying food, more effectively." "Males with smaller canines, pair-bonds, reinforced by regular sex, carrying and sharing a food..." "Could these be the keys to the evolution of bipedality?" "To the evolution of us?" "Better bipeds would of been more able to carry food, and carrying food would it been to earliest bipeds, a big reproductive advantage." "If this model is correct, then bipedality the break through at the base of the family tree and the foundation of our mating practices and sexual biology." "So turns out that the long side keys to our species success and the bases of our unique sexual biology are all tide up, with the strange way that we walk..." "We humans, we are not just the most unusual primates, we are argued believed the most unusual mammals on planet Earth." "Ardipithecus, a 4.4 million woodland biped, with small, blunt canines-teeth, hints that much of our unique sexual anatomy and physiology, even our families, and the way we walk, may all be fundamentally linked and fore more ancient, that we ever imagined." "The fossil evidences now suggest that the things that made humans so different, from all other mammals, are not recent, but can be traced all the way back, to Ardipithecus." "On going discoveries in Africa, are now bringing us, even closer, to the roots we share with the rest of the natural world." "But this journey into our past is far from over." "Now, discoveries of fossils, even older that the ones of Aramis, had made in the bad-lands nearby." "We humans, have literally changed the face of our planet so much so, that often it's hard to imagine that we are part of the natural world." "But the ancient fossils discovered in Ethiopia, have taken us, beyond imagination, to knowledge, based on hard evidences." "We found the first hominid, older than four million years." "Definitely how old was." "And that's turn up to be a new gen of species, "Ardipithecus ramidus"." "That discovery of "Ardipithecus ramidus"" "has opened a new window on the origins of the unique human biology, and where and why this biology evolved, in the first place." "But are they even older hominid fossil out there, waiting to be found?" "Surely there's no better place to look, that here, in Ethiopia!" "But the really unique thing of our study area of Middle Awash, here in Ethiopia is it given us a much longer sequence of human evolution in a form of snapshot at different plans time, so not just one fossil now, but a series of hominid fossils," "like a time elapsed film, chronically, how the human lineage changes, across deep time." "Even why the Middle Awash team was extracting Ardipithecus, from the sediments of Aramis, project scientists was busy elsewhere, in the study area, probing more deeply in time, in search of Ardi ancestors." "Paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie and geologist Giday WoldeGabriel were searching in an area at west of Aramis." "Here, the sediments are more than a million years older." "After years of searching, the Ethiopians made a new and significant find:" "fossils that would be dated at 5.7 million years old among the oldest hominids ever found." "Here, in the searing hard Ethiopia's Afar depression, the scientist have found hominid teeth and bone fragments more than a million years older, than the Ardi's skeleton." "They named these new fossils, "Ardipithecus kadabba"." "In a local afar language, "kadabba" means "Ancient Father"." "This find, along of others of Chad and Kenya, are still very fragmentary." "So far, there's no skeleton from this early time period, but the search goes on." "So with these discoveries, we're pushing our evolutionary history back to about 6-7 million years ago, and we not down yet." "We still, we think we getting closer to the common ancestor, between chimpanzees, our closest relatives, and ourselves." "With the new generation of African scientists at the forefront of this research, this vast continent will continue to produce new and important fossil discoveries." "I'm very, very proud of the Middle Awash project." "That discovered a lot of fossils, it was trained a lot of Ethiopian and American professionals, and still training more young generations from both, the US and Ethiopia." "Being a team anthropologist, is all about being able to find a fossil, analyze them, preparing them and study them and share the knowledge that you get out of this fossils." "with that issues of science community and the public, at it own." "For years to come, scientists from around the world will swept through fossil evidences gathered during decades of research, by the Middle Awash team and other groups, as well." "But why are these discoveries important, today?" "Virtually, any culture on Earth has here own origins myth." "It in fact this origins myths, are peoples stories about how the world was formed, and how they go on the world, but now we can move beyond myth, move beyond fairy tales." "We can move, guided by evidences, to what really happened in our past." "A century and a half ago, Darwin's critics, pointed at huge differences between living apes and humans, as "evidences" of failure flow in his theory that humans evolved." "Cartoonists of the time, satirized Darwin, as a deluded half-chimp, half-human creature." "More than a century later, a real creature, recovered on a small hill in Ethiopia, has brought the hard evidences, that Darwin lunged." "Ardipithecus has finely removed the barrier once thought to separate us, from the rest of the living world." "In this valley we found our roots." "We've been able to trace those roots, six millions in the past and to put together a record human evolution that is not only comprehensive, it's also very clear and it's very complaint." "We evolved!" "Evolution has produced trees, pilled with branches, not a chain of links." "Today, "homo sapiens" is just one twig, on life's vast an spreading tree." "Even the Ardipithecus is placed far back along our branch in the family tree, it already head important traits found today, only in our species." "Ardipithecus shows that we did not evolve from chimpanzees;" "it also reveals that we are not created apart, of the rest of life on Earth." "We humans evolved as part of the nature world, just like all the other animals." "Today our technologies driving thousands of plant and animals species to extinction, and changing the climates of our planet." "Now 4.4 million years after Ardi walked the Earth, we humans are facing the greatest challenge:" "to help return to balance, the world that we've changed."