Ardipithecus

American  

[ahr-di-pith-i-kuhs, ‐pi-thee-kuhs] / ˌɑr dɪˈpɪθ ɪ kəs, ‐pɪˈθi kəs /

noun

1. a genus of extinct hominine of the late Miocene and early Pliocene epochs, known from remains found in northeastern Ethiopia in the 1990s: its two named species are A. ramidus and A. kadabba .

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Etymology

Origin of Ardipithecus

First recorded in 1990–95; from New Latin, from Afar ard, ardi “earth” (from Arabic ʔarḍ ) + Latin pithēcus “ape” (from Greek píthēkos )

Example Sentences

Ardipithecus, he says, “makes Lucy and Co. downright humanlike in comparison.”

From Science Magazine • Apr. 3, 2024

More than anything, human prehistory is not a tidy narrative of an ape evolving into White’s Ardipithecus, which begot Leakey’s proto-humans, which became us.

From New York Times • Dec. 22, 2020

He found stark differences between Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4-million-year-old hominin also found in Ethiopia, and a physical cast that he studied, including several deformities not captured in the cast.

From Nature • Aug. 28, 2016

In the intervening years, several more specimens of Ardipithecus, classified as two different species, demonstrated that the organism was bipedal.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

Tim White, head of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has discovered many of our ancestors, from the ancient Ardipithecus to the much more recent Homo sapiens idaltu.

From Scientific American • Aug. 30, 2012