Nature Publishes Paper Critical of Ardi's Status as Human Evolutionary Ancestor

A new paper in the journal Nature, authored by paleoanthropologists Bernard Wood and Terry Harrison and titled "The evolutionary context of the first hominins," is critical of the claim that Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") was a bipedal ancestor of modern humans.

In 2009, the journal Science devoted an entire issue to introducing Ardi and promoting it as a likely human ancestor. It seems that Nature is in something of a rivalry with Science now that it has published this authoritative p...