Macrovertebrate Paleontology and the Pliocene Habitat of Ardipithecus ramidus

摘要

Ever since Darwin, scholars have speculated about the role that environment may have played in human origins, evolution, and adaptation. Given that all living great apes live and feed in trees, it has been assumed that the last common ancestor we shared with these forms was also a forest dweller. In 1925, Raymond Dart described the first Australopithecus, a child's skull, at Taung, South Africa.