Who is Lucy?
41 years ago on this very day, 24th of November Lucy was discovered by Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. She, or atleast the 40% of her fossilised skeleton was discovered near a village called Hadar in Awash valley in Ethiopia. She belongs to the Hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. The fossil is 3.2 million years old. |
| LUCY |
How Lucy got her name?
On the night of 24 Nov 1974, there was a lot of celebrations about the discovery of the Huminid skeleton. There were booze, dancing and along with it played the Beatles' song "Lucy in the sky with diamonds". No one knows who gave it but the skeleton was given the name "Lucy". It has been called as such since then.
She is considered a milestone in the field of fossil discovery due to the fact that she is earliest known to have walked on two legs, otherwise called as biped. There are scientific facts that suggest her ability to walk upright.
The evidence strongly suggests the fossils from elsewhere in East Africa belong to a single, sexually dimorphic species known as Australopithecus afarensis. At Hadar the size difference is pretty clear with larger males and smaller females. Since Lucy fall under the smaller category, it was concluded that Lucy is a female. There are no definite causes that have been identified for her death although there was a perimortem injury, a tooth puncture mark on top of her left pubic bone.
Now google has honored the 41st anniversary of the discovery by designing a google doodle.
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