Why was the Lucy skeleton an important discovery?
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.
Who is Lucy why is she important to mankind?
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.
What was the most important fact of the skeleton Lucy?
2. Lucy walked upright. One of the most important things about Lucy is the way she walked. By studying her bones, in particular the structure of her knee and spine curvature, scientists were able to discover that she spent most of her time walking on two legs – a striking human-like trait.
How was Lucy the skeleton discovered?
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 to human evolution?
Johanson serves as the founding director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. In terms of human evolution, the importance of Lucy can not be understated; in the early 1970s archaeologists and anthropologists argued that whilst the primitive origins were in Africa, it was Europe where we became ‘human’.
Why was Lucy the Australopithecus so important?
The discovery was so important because it entirely upset our understanding of the process of evolution. She showed that people had been wrong to think that we became intelligent before we stood up — Lucy and her contemporaries were better suited for walking upright than we were, but appear to have been much less intellectually advanced.
How old is Lucy from the Institute of human origins?
Lucy is dated to just less than 3.18 million years old. How do we know that her skeleton is from a single individual? Although several hundred fragments of hominid bone were found at the Lucy site, there was no duplication of bones.
Where is the real Lucy the hominid stored?
The “real” Lucy is stored in a specially constructed safe in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Because of the rare and fragile nature of many fossils, including hominids, molds are often made of the original fossils.