Walking tall

A new adult skeleton of the 4.4 million year old hominid, Australopithecus ramidus, has been unearthed at Aramis in Ethiopia by Yohannes Haile-Selassie, who was representing a multinational team called Middle Awash Research Team (MART) (Nature, Vol 373, No 6512).

Earlier, in 1992 and 1993, MART discovered the same species at Aramis but only 17 fragments were available; the new find consists of more than 90 pieces, including skull, arms, vertebral column, pelvis and legs, making up almost 45 per cent of a skeleton. The leg bones will help the scientists know whether this species walked erect.