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Australopithecus afarensis is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not take place until the 1970s.
Lucy Catalog no. AL 288-1 Common name Lucy Species Australopithecus afarensis Age 3.2 million years Place discovered Afar Depression, Ethiopia Date discovered November 24, 1974 ; 50 years ago (1974-11-24) Discovered by Donald Johanson Maurice Taieb Yves Coppens Tom Gray AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh, is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40 ...
Gracile australopithecines (Australopithecus afarensis) emerged in the same region, around 4 million years ago. The earliest known retouched tools were found in Lomekwi, Kenya, and date back to 3.3 Ma, in the late Pliocene.
Lucy is the most famous fossil to have been found at Hadar. Lucy is among the oldest hominin fossils ever discovered [6] and was later given the taxonomic classification Australopithecus afarensis. (The name 'Lucy' was inspired by the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles, which happened to be playing on the radio at base camp.)
H. habilis is intermediate between Australopithecus afarensis and H. erectus, and there have been suggestions to re-classify it within genus Australopithecus, as Australopithecus habilis. LD 350-1 is now considered the earliest known specimen of the genus Homo, dating to 2.75–2.8 Ma, found in the Ledi-Geraru site in the Afar Region of Ethiopia.
In 2010, cut marks dating to 3.4 mya on a bovid leg were found at the Dikaka site, which were at first attributed to butchery by A. afarensis, [66] but because the fossil came from a sandstone unit (and were modified by abrasive sand and gravel particles during the fossilisation process), the attribution to butchery is dubious.
The australopithecines, formally Australopithecina or Hominina, are generally any species in the related genera of Australopithecus and Paranthropus. It may also include members of Kenyanthropus, [4] Ardipithecus, [4] and Praeanthropus. [5] The term comes from a former classification as members of a distinct subfamily, the Australopithecinae. [6]
At the time Kenyanthropus was discovered, Australopithecus afarensis was the only recognised australopithecine to have existed between 4 and 3 million years ago, aside from its probable ancestor A. anamensis, making A. afarensis the likely progenitor of all other australopithecines as they diversified in the late Pliocene and into the Pleistocene.