Nov 24, 2015
41st Anniversary of the discovery of Lucy
On November 24th, 1974, as dusk settled upon the southern edge of the Afar Triangle near a village called Hadar,
a team of scientists organized by Yves Coppens, Maurice Taieb and
Donald Johanson toasted a tremendous discovery.
They had been scouring
this region for weeks--an area Taieb had brought to the forefront of
anthropological research years earlier--and that morning their search
paid enormous dividends with the find of Dr. Johanson and his student
Tom Gray.
The skeletal fragments unearthed in the Ethiopian landscape
made up the most complete example of Australopithecus afarensis ever found.
While they celebrated, a small tape recorder blared ”Lucy in the Sky
With Diamonds”, again and again. And then it struck someone--what finer
name than Lucy for the incredible specimen pulled from the sand that
day?
In the coming months and years, this find would upend our understanding of bipedalism,
and rewrite a significant chapter in the story of human evolution. To
recognize the 41st anniversary of this historic moment, Kevin Laughlin
has brought Lucy and her upright gait to life on our homepage.
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