

4.4 Million Years Old, 15 Years of Work, 11 Science Papers, 1 Fossil - ramanujan
http://www.sciencemag.org/ardipithecus/

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ramanujan
Having 11 papers at once in Science is almost unheard of (especially when
they're all by the same group of authors!). It's reserved for Human Genome
Project level efforts.

So what's the big deal?

A prof at Berkeley (Tim White) and his team discovered a fossil (Ardipithecus)
more than 15 years ago. It's a rare partial skeleton which sheds light on a
branch of primate evolution (the human/chimp common ancestor) that we haven't
had much direct physical evidence about. Seems they have opposable big toes
among other interesting features.

Over the last 15 years, White & co. only allowed their collaborators to look
at it, and others in the field have gotten annoyed and accused him of hoarding
the find. See a representative dustup from a few months back:

[http://anthropology.net/2009/08/25/science-suffers-from-
the-...](http://anthropology.net/2009/08/25/science-suffers-from-the-idiots-
at-scientific-american/)

Fast forward to a few days ago. Science publishes this monster issue dedicated
to the find. It sets the whole paleoanthropology world atwitter.

<http://www.sciencemag.org/ardipithecus/>

Here's some further commentary:

[http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/ardipithecus/ardipithecu...](http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/ardipithecus/ardipithecus-
faq-2009.html)

And now you're up to date, at least on the "inside science" aspects of this.

