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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 ...
Lucy’s discovery transformed our understanding of human origins. Don Johanson, who unearthed the Australopithecus afarensis remains in 1974, recalls the moment he found the iconic fossil.
Alemseged is best known for his discovery, on 10 December 2000, of Selam, also referred to as the "Dikika child" or “Lucy’s child”, the almost-complete fossilized remains of a 3.3 million-year-old child of the species Australopithecus afarensis. [6]
The scientific community took 20 more years to widely accept Australopithecus as a member of the human family tree. In 1997, an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton with skull was found in the Sterkfontein caves of Gauteng, South Africa. It is now called "Little Foot" and it is around 3.7 million years old.
In 1974, scientists in Ethiopia, Africa, discover a skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) from around 3.2 million years ago. Lucy's ancestors had existed in a forested environment for 50 million years, living mainly on fruit.
The team returned for the second field season in the following year and found hominid jaws. Then, on the morning of November 24, 1974, Johanson and Gray were searching in a gully about two and a half kilometres from the site where the knee joint had been discovered, where Johanson found the first fossil fragment of Lucy (Australopithecus). [3]
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.
Members of Australopithecus are sometimes referred to as the "gracile australopithecines", while Paranthropus are called the "robust australopithecines". [ 10 ] [ 11 ] The australopithecines occurred in the Late Miocene sub-epoch and were bipedal , and they were dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than that of ...