National Museum of Ethiopia

This is Ardi. She is 4.4 million years old.

image

We don’t have very much of her skull.

image

But we have lots of her teeth.

image

But we have enough of her hands and feet to know that she walked with a flat foot with her toes pointed outward. She still climbed a lot of trees but probably wasn’t as graceful climbing as chimpanzees are.

image

This is Lucy. She lived 3.15 million years ago. She was the first substantial hominid skeleton found.

image

This is Selam. She is the same species as Lucy but lived 3.3 million years ago. She was only 3 years old when she died.

image

This is what her skull looked like before it was fully excavated.

image

And here it is now.

image