A friend of mine’s sent me an item from National Geographic with
the headline ‘Oldest "human" skeleton found – disproves "missing
link"’. (Thanks, Heather!) The story itself is based on the
publication this week of a series of papers describing aspects
of Ardipithecus ramidus, & they make extremely interesting
reading. But before I start talking about them, please allow me
a little vent… I really dislike headlines like this! OK, they
attract attention, but… Essentially what it’s saying is that the
last common ancestor that humans share with our sister species,
chimpanzees, wasn’t particularly chimp-like, so we can kiss the
idea of that sort of ‘missing link’ goodbye. But is there any
good reason why that last common ancestor might have been like
modern chimps? After all, they’ve been progressing down their
own evolutionary path over the last 6 million years or so, just
like us. The article also notes that ‘Lucy’ aka Australopithecus
afarensis is no longer ‘it’. But then, at 3.2 million years old,
she was alwa