How The ‘Lucy’ Fossil Redefined Human Origins
She was, for a while, the oldest known member of the human family. Fifty years after the discovery of Lucy in Ethiopia, the remarkable remains continue to yield theories and questions
Lucy’s remains consist of fossilised dental remains, skull fragments, parts of the pelvis and femur that make up the world’s most famous Australopithecus afarensis.
She was discovered on November 24, 1974, in the Afar region of northeast Ethiopia by a team of scientists led by Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens, Donald Johanson, Jon Kalb, and Raymonde Bonnefille.
The 52 bone fragments, amounting to some 40 percent of Lucy’s skeleton, was, at the time, the most complete ever found, and revolutionised the understanding of our ancestors.
The skeleton was initially called A.L-288-1, in reference to Afar and its geolocation, and dated to 2.9 – 3.9 million years old.
But the researchers nicknamed it Lucy after The Beatles‘ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds“, which they listened to after celebrating their discovery.
Lucy walked on two legs and is thought to have died aged between 11 and 13 – considered an adult for this species. She was 1.10 metres tall (3.6 feet) and weighed 29 kg (64 pounds).
For Sahleselasie Melaku, the 31-year-old head of the palaeontology department, Lucy’s discovery represented an emergence from a “dark age” in our understanding of human ancestors.
“The impact of the discovery was very big in the discipline and even the whole world,” he told AFP.
Lucy showed that members of the human family existed beyond three million years ago, and she also provided a template for fitting together later bone discoveries.
The amount of information that can be gleaned from the bones has allowed some highly detailed theories about Lucy’s life.
A slightly deformed vertebra, for instance, “means she probably had back problems”, said Melaku.
Jean-Renaud Boisserie, a paleonthologist specialised in Ethiopia and the research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research said it was an “exceptional” breakthrough for the discipline.
“We basically knew very little about the period of three million years ago, and we had nothing as complete,” he said.
Lucy was often described as “the grandmother of humanity”, but more recent discoveries suggest she may have been more like an aunt or a cousin, experts say.
Skeletal finds in places like Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya have complicated the picture and led to much debate about when different species of hominid emerged and which should be classified as part of the human or chimpanzee families.
The discovery of “Toumai” in Chad in 2001 – a skull dated to six or seven million years old – suggested the human family may go much further back than previously thought.
Meanwhile, Lucy has yet to reveal all her secrets.
A study published in 2016 argued she spent a third of her time in trees, where she nested, and had highly developed upper limbs.
Another study that year theorised that she died after falling from a tree.
A 2022 study in Nature, focused on Lucy’s pelvis, concluded that newborn members of Australopithecus had a very immature brain, like human newborns today, and required parental support to survive.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” said Melaku with a smile. “Especially, we don’t know much more about the early livelihoods of these early human ancestors.”
The museum receives frequent requests to study it, but the iconic skeleton no longer leaves Ethiopia.
Wider scientific progress and advanced equipment are opening up new avenues for research.
“The studies that can be carried out on her, on her peers, pose the scientific questions of tomorrow,” said Boisserie.
“Material as exceptional as this plays a driving role in the evolution of research.”
See more here sciencealert.com
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JFK
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“Lucy” was not even human.
And it is definitely not related to any human origins.
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Shawn Marshall
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Grand conclusions from a paucity of data seems to infect all of scientism today. If you can’t test it you are just bullshitting
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JFK
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Well, no-one can test this, or any of this.
That’s why it is not science, but pure bullsh*t.
Looking at the amount of bones they’ve recovered, their state, and their kind, the claim of it being human can only be ridiculed. Our scientific priesthood could not even establish whether or not “Lucy” was a human ancestor even if they had a fresh DNA sample… This is the level of sophistication we are dealing with here…
As far as I am concerned, this whole thing is completely ridiculous. Especially them recreating a picture of the animal based on incomplete fragments of some bones, which can all belong to the same animal only with a great deal of uncertainty.
Not to mention that their “professionalism” has pushed them to present pig teeth or deliberate hoaxes as human ancestors too many times in the past to ignore.
The only scientific thing you can state based on those bones, is that the recovered pelvis belongs to a species with a pelvis. And that’s where the science ends. Anything else, especially regarding the size, thickness, and shape of the bones is totally untrustworthy. Shape, thickness, and size in bones can vary too much within the same species and for various reasons (genetics, disease, bone growth intervention, etc).
For me, things are pretty simple. If “Lucy” was human, no one would debate it. It would be self-evident. But it is not. And the uncontrollable urge of these people to make it human clearly states that it is definitely not, and they know it.
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fool me twice
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The article appears to claim the truth when everyone here knows that the ‘Lucy’ discovery is a definite hoax. What other articles on Principia can I believe.
Unbookmarked
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Andy Rowlands
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Everyone here does not know it. I have seen no evidence the Lucy fossil is a fake.
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Andy Rowlands
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There seems to be a lot of science deniers here.
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JFK
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More like bullshit deniers…
When they take a ape, and get it to evolve into a human, inside a lab setting, and without external intervention, then we can consider calling it science.
Although, I feel petty for the apes that might be wasted on this futile crusade.
For the moment, they can’t even find the natural force able to promote evolution, since –clearly– mutations and natural selection aren’t…
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Andy Rowlands
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Just because you have a problem with evolution does not make it ‘bullshit’.
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