So, prior to 6 million years ago, things were looking bad for us Apes. If the last common ancestor between us and chimpanzees, had anything like the chimpanzee social pattern, males were spending most of their time and energy competing in their hierarchies for females, and the females were left to fend for themselves …
Recall that Tim White’s team of Ardipithecus ramidus experts chose Owen Lovejoy to interpret that the mating system of this founding species of our hominid Family was monogamous. Recall also that this is reinforced by the finding that the mating systems of the founding species of all the other super-cooperative species besides us (insects) were …
Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed Ardi, is arguably the most significant fossil find in the history of paleoanthropology due to its completeness and antiquity – 4.4 M. years, just 1.6 M. years after the last common ancestor with Chimpanzees. The theoretician of the group, Owen Lovejoy hypothesized that the reduction in the size of the male canine …
