


Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus, was 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than "Lucy," then the oldest known human ancestor. In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White-"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"-uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region.

A behind-the-scenes account of the discovery of the oldest skeleton of a human ancestor, named "Ardi"-a find that shook the world of paleoanthropology and radically altered our understanding of human evolution.
