Lucy (Australopithecus)

Lucy is the nickname of a famous fossil discovery. Its official name is AL 288-1. It is a partial skeleton of a female Australopithecus afarensis. This is an early human ancestor. 

Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago and is a hominid.

 Discovery 
In 1974 a team of paleoanthropologists found Lucy in Hadar, Ethiopia, in the Awash Valley of the Afar Depression. (The word "afarensis" refers to this location.)

Out of several hundred pieces of bone, they found 47 that came from a single skeleton: Lucy's. This was about 40% of Lucy's entire skeleton, making it much more complete than most fossil skeletons. 

The team played the popular song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to celebrate their discovery. This is where Lucy got its nickname.

 Description 
Analysis showed that Lucy was a young adult when she died. She would have been about 3.5 feet tall and weighed between 60 and 65 pounds.

Scientists do not know how Lucy died. In 2016, some scientists proposed that she fell out of a tree.John Kappelman; Richard A. Ketcham; Stephen Pearce; Lawrence Todd; Wiley Akins; Matthew W. Colbert; Mulugeta Feseha; Jessica A. Maisano; Adrienne Witzel (2016). "Perimortem fractures in Lucy suggest mortality from fall out of tall tree". Nature. 537 (7621): 503–507. Bibcode:2016Natur.537..503K. doi:10.1038/nature19332. PMID 27571283. S2CID 4402700. Others disagreed. 

 Importance 

 Bipedalism 
Scientists learned a lot about human evolution from studying Lucy. 

For example, her skeleton shows that she had a small skull, which means her brain was small, like an ape. However, her hips and femurs were more like a human's than an ape's. This, and many other features in her legs and feet,Stern Jr., J. T.; Susman, R. L. (1983). "The locomotor anatomy of Australopithecus afarensis". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 60 (3): 279–317. Bibcode:1983AJPA...60..279S. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330600302. PMID 6405621. showed that Lucy walked upright like a human. All australopithecines had small brains and walked on two feet like Lucy did.Johanson D.C. & Maitland A.E. 1981. Lucy: the beginning of humankind. St Albans: Granada, 283297. Wood B.A. 1994. Evolution of australopithecines. In Jones S. Martin R. & Pilbeam D. (eds) 2004. The Cambridge encyclopedia of human evolution. 8th ed, Cambridge University Press.  

This shows that bipedalism came before increased brain size in human evolution. In other words, human ancestors walked on two feet before they evolved larger brains. Before this, many scientists had thought that human ancestors evolved intelligence before anything else.

 Impact 
According to Dr. Ebeth Sawchuk from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History:Lucy’s discovery came at a very important moment in paleoanthropology, when there was beginning to be greater public awareness that Africa is the cradle of humankind. Lucy was one of the biggest discoveries of the time and was critical for establishing funding for this area of science moving forward. Her fossils galvanized the world’s interest in human origins.

 References 

Category:Australopithecines