Extra Credit Assignment “ARDI”
The sequence of videos about the new discovery of the hominid Australopithecus is very helpful to understand human evolution and how theories are challenged supported and sometimes discredit when new fossils are found. The videos are not very complex but explain with brief detailed information the main aspects to understand the new fossils found in the middle Awash in Ethiopia. There is too much noise going on between one video and another and it kind of makes it hard not to lose the ideas presented in previous videos. I think that the advertising videos should be removed, and instead of having different clips, all the short videos in each group of clips should be put together into one and only have three different longer videos.
3 aspects that are the most helpful in understanding this new fossil are: the structure of the feet, the dating of the fossils, and the structure of the vertebra and pelvis. The information presented regarding the structure of the feet and vertebra, and the process used to date the fossils is very complete and explained in a simple way that makes it easy to understand. Moreover, the foot, vertebra and pelvis fossils give a lot of information to understand more about bipedalism in early hominids. A small feature with big implications was found on the ardipithecus pelvis and it is clear evidence that ardipithecus walked up right. ARDI’s remains help understand evolution better because the fossils are the oldest ever found, and they show characteristics that are not found in other fossils. ARDI’s fossils also answer a lot of questions that Lucy could not answer. AA
The structure of the feet is like nothing else seen before. It is the feet of a bipedal hominid but the founding of the medial cuneiform bone tells us that ARDI had grasping feet. ARDI was not like a human or a modern chimpanzee, ARDI was an evolutionary mosaic with different traits that were lost and gave way to the