Lucy, you sweet young thing. No longer can you lay claim to being the oldest creature on the human branch of the primate family tree.

The honor goes to Ardi, who at 4.4 million years old has you beat by a little over a million. Her assembled bones were unveiled Thursday by scientists who had been analyzing the Ardipithecus specimen since fragments were found in Ethiopia in 1992.

The particulars: Taller and heavier than Lucy, she weighed about 120 pounds and stood four feet tall (yes, she probably walked upright, though she was still an agile tree-climber). Forget the high heels; her feet had no arches (Lucy’s did). Tim D. White of Berkeley, a leader of the study team, said, “We are getting so close to that common ancestor of hominids and chimps, and we’d love to find an earlier skeleton.”

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com