Description and Analysis of the Ardipithecus Ramidus Postcranium

这项由美国国家科学基金资助的工作将集中于最大限度地从埃塞俄比亚阿法尔地区（阿拉米斯）的一组新的、非常重要的早期人类化石中获得知识。这些人类祖先是迄今为止发现的最古老的祖先（440万年前），与任何其他已知的人类祖先都不同，因此他们被归为新属和新种地猿。除了拥有极其原始的牙齿和颌外，这个新物种在生态学上也很不寻常，因为它代表了生活在封闭林地和森林物种主导环境中的第一批人类祖先。他们的头骨和牙齿解剖结构使他们与任何人类祖先物种中现存的猿类最相似，他们的研究有望为人类和猿类祖先分离的年龄和原因提供重要的新线索，这一事件基本上开启了人类的崛起。我们的研究有两个主要目标：1)对这些新人类化石的肢骨进行明确的描述性分析；2)对我们自己和其他现存和化石灵长类动物遗骸的功能和比较分析。

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.