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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The skeleton of an early human who lived 4.4 million years ago shows that humans did not evolve from chimpanzee-like ancestors, researchers reported on Thursday./nInstead, the missing link -- the common ancestor of both humans and modern apes -- was different from both, and apes have evolved just as much as humans have from that common ancestor, they said./nThe researchers stressed that \"Ardi\" may now be the oldest known hominid, but she was not the missing link. \"At 4.4 million years ago we found something pretty close to it,\" said Tim White of the University of California Berkeley, who helped lead the research team./nThey described the partial skeleton of a female representative of Ardipithecus ramidus. The hominid species lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia./nThe 4-foot (1.2 meter) tall creature is a million years older than \"Lucy\" -- the skeleton of another species called Australopithecus afarensis that is one of the best-known pre-humans./nGenetics suggest that humans and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, diverged 6 million to 7 million years ago, although some research suggests this may have happened 4 million years ago.

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http://www.ethiotube.net/video/6010/ETV-News--New-44-million-years-old-fossile-named-Adri-found-in-Ethiopia