What was important about the discovery of Lucy?
Lucy was one of the first hominin fossils to become a household name. Her skeleton is around 40% complete – at the time of her discovery, she was by far the most complete early hominin known. As the team found more and more fragments, they began to appreciate that they were uncovering an extraordinary skeleton.
Who is Lucy and why is she important?
Because her skeleton was so complete, Lucy gave us an unprecedented picture of her kind. In 1974, Lucy showed that human ancestors were up and walking around long before the earliest stone tools were made or brains got bigger, and subsequent fossil finds of much earlier bipedal hominids have confirmed that conclusion.
What did the discoveries of Lucy and Ardi reveal?
Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
Why was the discovery of Lucy so important to archaeologists?
During that return journey, Johanson spotted a forearm bone, identified it — and then kept looking, where the two found a huge set of bones that would eventually represent 40 per cent of the entire skeleton. The discovery was so important because it entirely upset our understanding of the process of evolution.
Where was the discovery of Lucy happened?
Ethiopia
Lucy was discovered in 1974 in Africa, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History….Lucy (Australopithecus)
| Catalog no. | AL 288-1 |
|---|---|
| Age | 3.2 million years |
| Place discovered | Afar Depression, Ethiopia |
| Date discovered | November 24, 1974 |
What adaptation did Lucy have and why is it an advantage?
Lucy represented an evolutionary bridge, with her relatively short legs and long arms, an anatomy of arboreal species. But walking upright had the advantage of freeing the forelimbs from locomotor needs, and instead to be used for carrying.
What important clues do you think fossils like Lucy provide about the past?
Although Lucy is too old and heavily mineralized to have any preserved DNA, traces of other chemicals in her fossilized bones may contain clues about what she ate and where she lived.
Was Lucy the first discovery of ancient bones?
Perhaps the world’s most famous early human ancestor, the 3.2-million-year-old ape “Lucy” was the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton ever found, though her remains are only about 40 percent complete (photo of Lucy’s bones). Discovered in 1974 by paleontologist Donald C. Johanson in Hadar, Ethiopia, A.
When and where was Lucy first found?
When and where was Lucy found? Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray on November 24, 1974, at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. They had taken a Land Rover out that day to map in another locality. After a long, hot morning of mapping and surveying for fossils, they decided to head back to the vehicle.
What is the Lucy fossil?
Unlike most other fossils of early man —a tooth here, a bone fragment there, occasionally a portion of a skull—this one comprised a good part of the skeleton. Named after the Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Lucy was a small creature, not much more than a meter tall, with a brain capacity about a third that of modern man.
How did Donald Johanson find Lucy?
Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray on November 24, 1974, at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. They had taken a Land Rover out that day to map in another locality. After a long, hot morning of mapping and surveying for fossils, they decided to head back to the vehicle.
Why is Lucy so important?
A few years would pass, however, before the full importance of Lucy would become clear. It was early 1979 when TIME declared her a “front-page celebrity” after Johanson announced the Lucy was a specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, a whole different species from those previously known Australopithecus examples.