Why is Ardi and Lucy important?
A chipanzee is like a missing link. Its resembling something between humans and today's apes. It would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. The new evidence suggests that the study of chipanzee anatomy and behavior is used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors.
Lucy is direct evidence that something, or perhaps someone, very much like humans walk the Earth over 3 million years ago. Some people alive today cannot believe this. Some people are busy looking for additional specimens, perhaps older.What makes Lucy important is that her ability to walk on two feet rather then on four feet or having to use a "knuckle walk."
Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas.As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like.
