Lucy was first discovered by Donald Johanson, an Arizona State University scientist, and Tom Gray, his graduate student research assistant, on November 24th, 1974. After a long morning of mapping and searching for fossils in Hadar, a site of the Afar region of Ethiopia, Johanson proposed to take a different route back to their Land Rover through a nearby gully and at once spotted a forearm bone (proximal ulna) which he quickly classified as that of a hominid! A couple weeks later, 40% of a hominid skeleton had been composed by the two archaeologists!
Lucy's bones proved that she had been able to walk upright, and, as bipedal locomotion is one of the most characteristic traits of hominids, this showed that she was indeed a hominid! In addition, with an age of about 3 million years, Lucy became famous as one of the most complete and oldest fossils of a hominid! As a result, her fossil also proved that bipedalism evolved before larger, human-sized brains did. This fossil's bones all come from an individual of a specific species, size, and developmental age. Specifically, Lucy is classified as a Australopithecus afarensis, also known as a 'southern ape of Afar', and we know she was female because of her evident size difference, with a height of three and a half feet and weight of 60-65 pounds, in comparison to much larger male fossils of her same species. Despite her seemingly-human silhouette, up close she had a small head with a brain similar in size to that of a chimpanzee, a body covered in hair, long arms, slightly curved fingers and toes, and mobile ankles and shoulders (though she was still more adept at walking than climbing).
But why does this ancient fossil now go by the name of Lucy? Well, the great night of the fossil's discovery, as the scientists drank, danced, and celebrated with the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" seemingly on repeat in honor of what seemed to be a roughly complete hominid skeleton, they began referring to the fossil as Lucy! From that point on, the name stuck!
The best guess as to Lucy's cause of death is that she fell from a great height at the age of 15-16 years old. This is probable because her species was vulnerable to many predators such as hyenas or jackals, and she would have most likely sought tall trees to climb for safety. Another possible reason for her falling is that she would have slept in trees every night or climbed them to forage for fruits.
Putting aside her ice-cold case, Lucy continues to be a celebrity loved by countless around the world, both inside and outside of anthropology. The discovery of her species, the Australopithecus afarensis, in the '70s demonstrated that the evolution which took place from apes to humans was not instantaneous, but rather was linked through a multitude of species with gradual skeletal variations. Not to mention, for many Ethiopians, Lucy is seen as a symbol of their country, as well as a reminder to the world that Africa is the birthplace of humankind. Did you know her Ethiopian name is Dinkinesh, which means 'you are marvelous'? People from Afar even describe her as 'Heelomali', which means 'she is special'. Overall, since the time of her discovery to the present, Lucy has continued to be a star in the world of anthropology, thus earning herself the nickname of 'Anthropology's Sweetheart'.
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