Ardipithecus kadabba
The earliest Ardipithecus, from Ethiopia, lives in woodland at the very end of the Miocene.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 467 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 300 thousand years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Ardipithecus kadabba is known from teeth, jaw fragments and a toe bone from the Middle Awash, dated between about 5.8 and 5.2 million years ago. The toe bone has a joint surface angled in the way associated with toe-off during walking. Its canines are large by later hominin standards but already reduced relative to apes. It leads directly to Ardipithecus ramidus, whose far more complete skeleton would later show a hominin that walked upright while retaining a grasping foot.