Skeleton Predates Lucy

I read about a newly discovered fossil in the blog “Fossil Skeleton from Africa Predates Lucy” by Josh Wilford. This blog describes a skeleton of a Ardi, an Ardi is a human branch of the prime mate family tree. The Ardi was said to come before lucies on a time scale, which were the previous earliest human branch out there. The Ardi was expected to be alive 4.4 million years ago. When I look at my life of 14 years I think that I have been alive forever, but when u compare that to 4.4 million years that is a puny amount of time. Finding this new skeleton make me wonder what all could have happened in those 4.4 million years or even before that. It makes me wonder how we could go from a Ardi at 4 feet tall and 120 pounds to the human beings we are today averaging somewhere around 6 feet tall and 165 pounds. I know we evolved from apes way back then but what did apes evolve from? I think that all animals evolved from something except for the one original animal. I would like to see the beginning animal if there was one. It would consist of many interesting species such as fish, dogs, human, birds, and many more. It’s very interesting to thing about what animals used to look like and be able to do millions and millions of years ago. It also makes me think about how life came to be upon earth. I wonder if there is a planet out there somewhere where they have life forms like ours, like a parallel earth.