Australopithecus garhi is a gracile australopithecine species whose fossils were iscovered in 1996 by a research team led by Ethiopian paleontologist Berhane Asfaw and Tim White, an American paleontologist researcher. The hominin remains were initially believed to be a human ancestor species and the final missing link between the Australopithecus genus and the human genus, Homo. However it is now believed that A. garhi, although more advanced than any other australopithecine, was only a competitor species to the species ancestral to Homo and therefore not a human ancestor. The remains are from the time when there are very few fossil records, between 2.0 and 3.0 million years ago. Tim White was the scientist to find the first of the key A. garhi fossils in 1996 near the village of Bouri, located in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. The species was confirmed and established as A. garhi on November 20, 1997 by the Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie. The species epithet "garhi" means "surprise" in the local Afar language.