An international team of researchers Thursday unveiled the fossils from 4.4 million-year-old 'hominid' - comprising pre-human species and their kin - unearthed in the Awash region of Ethiopia in the beginning of 1994.

The researchers, led by paleoanthropologist Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the extensive fossil trove - comprising 36 males, females and a young of an ancient prehuman species called Ardipithecus ramidus - reveals that human predecessors were more modern than what the scholars had presumed till now.

The highlight of these remains is the skeleton of a female found to be at least a million years older than the iconic skeleton of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has thus far been considered ancestor of the human species.

The 4-foot-tall female, nicknamed 'Ardi', who has become the best known human forebear, is actually a distant cousin of Lucy's line, Australopithecus afarensis.

Saying that the 'Ardi' discovery further widens the evolutionary gap that separates humankind from apes and chimpanzees, White remarked: "Ardi is not a chimp. It's not a human. It's what we used to be. It gives us a new perspective on our origins. We opened a time capsule from a time and place that we knew nothing about."

Further, White also added that though Ardi is not the last common ancestor, "it's the closest we've come to the last common ancestor."