Orrorin

Abstract

The discovery of Orrorin tugenensis forced scientists to change their views about our origins. For the first time, a bipedal hominid was known in strata as old as 6 million years. It indicated that our remote ancestors lived in a wooded environment and that bipedalism did not evolve later in an open environment as previously thought. Highly debated when it was first published in 2001, Orrorin is today accepted as a hominid, but there is still no consensus regarding its phylogenetic position.