Ardi

Scientists have announced the discovery of the oldest human ancestor skeleton ever found...predating Lucy by one million years. She is a 110 pound female nicknamed Ardi (taken from her species name Ardipithecus ramidus) found in Ethiopia.

According to National Geographic News:

"The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.

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."