lucy skeleton characteristics
Her pubic arch was over 90 degrees and derived; that is, similar to modern human females. ‘Lucy’ (AL 288-1) is an adult female, 3.2 million-year-old A. afarensis skeleton found at Hadar, Ethiopia. Scientists named this "young lady" Lucy. The brain of "Lucy" was relatively small and overlapped in size with living apes; however, the shape of the pelvis, along with other characteristics of the postcranial skeleton, indicates that "Lucy" walked upright. [17], Over the next three weeks the team found several hundred pieces or fragments of bone with no duplication, confirming their original speculation that the pieces were from a single individual; ultimately, it was determined that an amazing 40 percent of a hominin skeleton was recovered at the site. She belonged to a species that shared both human and ape characteristics. They had taken a Land Rover out that day to map in another locality. Taieb formed the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE) and invited three prominent international scientists to conduct research expeditions into the region. The entire structure has been remodeled to accommodate an upright stance and the need to balance the trunk on only one limb with each stride. Johanson believed that Lucy, as he has come to call his skeleton, was the oldest human ancestor, at 3.2 million years old. About 3 million years ago, when Lucy was alive, she was rather short, about 4 feet tall, and probably weighed about 50 pounds. "Lucy" acquired her name from the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by the Beatles, which was played loudly and repeatedly in the expedition camp all evening after the excavation team's first day of work on the recovery site. The Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and other museums declined to host the exhibits. The heavier musculature of the jaws—those muscles operating the intensive masticatory process for chewing plant material—similarly would also limit development of the braincase. Her bones implied that Lucy hung in trees as well as walked upright. The pelvis and leg bones clearly indicate weight-bearing ability, equating to habitual bipedal, but the upper limbs are reminiscent of orangutans, which would indicate arboreal locomotion. Lucy's skeleton consists of 47 out of 207 bones, including parts of the arms, legs, spine, ribs and pelvis, as well as the lower jaw and several other skull fragments. But the find left no doubts that she walked erect. A single duplication of even the most modest of bone fragments would have disproved the single skeleton claim, but no such duplication is seen in Lucy. [39], Skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis, potassium-argon radiometric dating method, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Study Suggests 3.2 Million-Year-Old Lucy Spent a Lot of Time in Trees", "Limb Bone Structural Proportions and Locomotor Behavior in A.L. For all we've learned about Lucy's life over four … Lucy's skeleton offers several signs of bipedalism, or walking on two feet. concluded that this morphology arose "independently in gorillas and hominins", and that A. afarensis is "too derived to occupy a position as a common ancestor of both the Homo and robust australopith clades". A later reconstruction by Tim White showed a broad iliac flare and a definite anterior wrap, indicating that Lucy had an unusually broad inner acetabular distance and unusually long superior pubic rami. The term hominid refers to a member of the zoological family Hominidae. Her third molars (“wisdom teeth”) are erupted and slightly worn, indicating that she was fully adult. Fully 60% of the blood supply of non-human apes is used in the digestion process, greatly impeding the development of brain function (which is limited thereby to using about 10% of the circulation). How do we know that her skeleton is a single individual? Recent research has shown that she didn't move in the same way as humans do, nor was she simply a terrestrial being. However, the majority of them weren't much more than bone fragments, which helped scientists at the time to piece together bits of our ancestry, but they were never able to get a clear picture … The vertebrae show evidence of the spinal curvatures necessitated by a permanent upright stance. [17], Lucy was 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall,[18] weighed 29 kg (64 lb), and (after reconstruction) looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. At some point during that night, no one remembers when or by whom, the skeleton was given the name “Lucy.” The name has stuck. [28], Lucy's cause of death cannot be determined. [38] She was also exhibited in Mexico at the Mexico Museum of Anthropology until its return to Ethiopia in May 2013. Lucy is the dubbed name for a skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis found in Hadar, Ethiopia (1974). (Whether or not Lucy walked upright does not prove that man evolved from such a creature since God could have made a primate species that could walk upright.) [8] In September 2008, between the exhibits in Houston and Seattle, the skeletal assembly was taken to the University of Texas at Austin for 10 days to perform high-resolution CT scans of the fossils.[36]. However, this reconstruction proved to be faulty, as the superior pubic rami would not have been able to connect were the right ilium identical to the left. Lucy had a valgus knee, commonly known as knock-knee, as well as curved finger bones. An even more complete skeleton of a related hominid, Ardipithecus, was found in the same Awash Valley in 1992. [30][31] Donald Johanson and Tim White disagreed with the suggestions.[32]. This is what is called a perimortem injury, one occurring at or around the time of death. At first view nothing was immediately visible, but as they turned to leave a fossil caught Johanson's eye; an arm bone fragment was lying on the slope. Tuesday's Google Doodle honors Lucy, a skeleton found 41 years ago in Ethiopia that showed the evolution of apes into humans. She was only about 3 feet, 8 inches tall. Australopithecus afarensis Artist's rendering of Australopithecus afarensis , which lived from 3.8 to 2.9 million years ago. Lucy is the dubbed name for a skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis found in Hadar, Ethiopia (1974). The most famous specimen is “Lucy,” a nearly complete skeleton found in 1974 at Hadar, Ethiopia. In 1974, a very old skeleton was found in Africa. Lucy skeleton 1974. The right innominate (colored gray) is a reconstruction. Tuesday's Google Doodle honors Lucy, a skeleton found 41 years ago in Ethiopia that showed the evolution of apes into humans. While these species differ in many ways, hominids share a suite of characteristics that define them as a group. The most conspicuous of these traits is bipedal locomotion, or walking upright. Her femur presents a mix of ancestral and derived traits. One of the most striking characteristics of the Lucy skeleton is a valgus knee, which indicates that she normally moved by walking upright. Within moments, he spotted a right proximal ulna (forearm bone) and quickly identified it as a hominid. The skeleton is rather complete and very well preserved. Lucy was only about 110 centimetres tall but was a fully grown adult when she died about 3.2 million years ago. There was discussion of the risks of damage to the unique fossils, and other museums preferred to display casts of the fossil assembly. A plaster replica is publicly displayed there instead of the original skeleton. Lucy, a hairy and short skeleton that looks a little like a human, is being celebrated by today’s Google Doodle. [29], In 2016 researchers at the University of Texas at Austin suggested that Lucy died after falling from a tall tree. However, most of the hand and foot bones are missing. Ethiopia celebrated the return of Lucy in May 2013. While fossils cannot be dated directly, the deposits in which they are found sometimes contain volcanic flows and ashes, which can now be dated with the 40Ar/39Ar (Argon-Argon) dating technique. 444-2 was nicknamed Lucy, after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". [4][5] A 2016 study proposes that Australopithecus afarensis was also to a large extent tree-dwelling, though the extent of this is debated.[6][7]. The shape of the pelvis indicates that "Lucy" walked upright. Lucy’s compact feet were capable of supporting her full body weight as she walked upright, but her long, curved toe bones resemble that of a tree-climbing ape. Perhaps the most famous specimen of Australopithecus is “ Lucy,” a remarkably preserved fossilized skeleton from Ethiopia that has been dated to 3.2 mya. The ends of long bones are often missing, and their shafts are sometimes broken (which enables the predator to get to the marrow). The brain of "Lucy" was relatively small and overlapped in size with living apes. The skeleton was said to be 40% complete, which made it by far the most complete early human ancestor. The bones all come from an individual of a single species, a single size, and a single developmental age. [34] A portion of the proceeds from the tour was designated to modernizing Ethiopia's museums. (Whether or not Lucy walked upright does not prove that man evolved from such a creature since God could have made a primate species that could walk upright.) A cast of the original skeleton in its reconstructed form is displayed at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. In addition, Lucy’s body size overall, as well as those of other Lucy the pre-human hominid and fossil hominin, captured much public notice; she became almost a household name at the time. Lucy had an "incredible amalgam of more primitive and more derived features that had not been seen before," says Johanson. She May Have Died by Falling Out of a Tree. Some nine years later, and now assembled altogether, she was returned to Ethiopia. ‘Lucy’ (AL 288-1) is an adult female, 3.2 million-year-old A. afarensis skeleton found at Hadar, Ethiopia. The fossilised skeleton owes her name to repeated listening of The Beatles' 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' Andrew Griffin @_andrew_griffin Tuesday 24 November 2015 12:06 [27], Work at the American Museum of Natural History uncovered a possible Theropithecus vertebral fragment that was found mixed in with Lucy's vertebrae, but confirmed the remainder belonged to her. One of the few clues we have is the conspicuous lack of postmortem carnivore and scavenger marks. French geologist and paleoanthropologist Maurice Taieb discovered the Hadar Formation for paleoanthropology in 1970 in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia in Hararghe region; he recognized its potential as a likely repository of the fossils and artifacts of human origins. For starters, Lucy was the most complete Australopithecus skeleton ever found. Scientists can tell that Lucy is female because the anatomy of her pelvis generally resembles that of female modern humans. In contrast, the only damage we see on Lucy's bones is a single carnivore tooth puncture mark on the top of her left pubic bone. Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, several hundred pieces of fossilized bone representing 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. [37] In New York, the exhibition included Ida (Plate B), the other half of the recently announced Darwinius masilae fossil. Then, on the morning of 24 November 1974, near the Awash River, Johanson abandoned a plan to update his field notes and joined graduate student Tom Gray to search Locality 162 for bone fossils. When it was resumed thirteen years later in 1990, the more precise argon-argon technology had been updated by Derek York at the University of Toronto. The length ratio of her humerus (arm) to fe… Roughly 40% of Lucy’s skeleton is accounted for (hands and feet excluded), including cranial material such as … Her brain was only one-third the size of the brains humans have now. Although several hundred fragments of hominid bone were found at the Lucy site, there was no duplication of bones. [8][35], The Houston Museum made arrangements for exhibiting at ten other museums, including the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. This new “Lucy’s child” specimen is quite a remarkable find and will yield significant observations. A six-year exhibition tour of the United States was undertaken during 2007–13; it was titled Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia and it featured the actual Lucy fossil reconstruction and over 100 artifacts from prehistoric times to the present. Australopithecus afarensis Artist's rendering of Australopithecus afarensis , which lived from 3.8 to 2.9 million years ago. The creature had a small brain like a chimpanzee, but the pelvis and leg bones were almost identical in function to those of modern humans, showing with certainty that Lucy's species were hominins that had stood upright and had walked erect. Lucy was found in the highest of these—the Kada Hadar or KH—member. The nearly half-complete skeleton of Lucy the Australopithecus [Photo by Dave Einsel/Getty Images]With the discovery that Lucy used stone tools came the realization that Australopithecus afarensis were the first species in our evolutionary ladder to cook, cut, and eat meat, says Shannon McPherron, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Lucy also had a lordose curve, or lumbar curve, another indicator of habitual bipedalism. Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray on November 24, 1974, at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. The skeleton represents the upright and bipedal walking gait, which is similar with the one of human being. Strange! Males were … Within moments, he spotted … [21], Initial attempts were made in 1974 by Maurice Taieb and James Aronson in Aronson's laboratory at Case Western Reserve University to estimate the age of the fossils using the potassium-argon radiometric dating method. The emphasis on bipedalism became well known to the public by the sensational fossil Lucy in 1974. [19], With the permission of the government of Ethiopia, Johanson brought all the skeletal fragments to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, where they were stabilized and reconstructed by anthropologist Owen Lovejoy. Lucy was exhibited at the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City from June until October 2009. The only visible damage is a single carnivore tooth mark on the top of her left pubic bone, believed to have occurred at or around the time of death, but which is not necessarily related to her death. On a hunch, Johanson decided to look at the bottom of a small gully that had been checked at least twice before by other workers. There are indications of degenerative disease to her vertebrae that do not necessarily indicate old age. The specimen is usually classified as Australopithecus afarensis and suggests—by having long arms, short legs, … Her third molars were erupted and slightly worn and, therefore, it was concluded that she was fully matured with completed skeletal development. The site lay about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) from the site where "Lucy" subsequently was found, in a rock stratum 60 metres (200 ft) deeper than that in which the Lucy fragments were found. Lucy was an Australopithecus, about one meter tall and about 3.2 million years old. Evidence now strongly suggests that the Hadar material, as well as fossils from elsewhere in East Africa from the same time period, belong to a single, sexually dimorphic species known as Australopithecus afarensis. Lucy became famous worldwide, and the story of her discovery and reconstruction was published in a book by Johanson. The “real” Lucy is stored in a specially constructed safe in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lucy" skeleton Like other australopiths, the A. afarensis skeleton exhibits a mosaic anatomy with some aspects similar to modern humans and others to non-human great apes. Near it lay a fragment from the back of a small skull. Juan Aunion/Shutterstock. Later in the night of November 24, there was much celebration and excitement over the discovery of what looked like a fairly complete hominid skeleton. Though the sacrum was remarkably well preserved, the innominate was distorted, leading to two different reconstructions. By 1992 Aronson and Robert Walter had found two suitable samples of volcanic ash—the older layer of ash was about 18 m below the fossil and the younger layer was only one meter below, closely marking the age of deposition of the specimen. Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray on November 24, 1974, at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. A cast of the skeleton as well as a corpus reconstruction of Lucy is displayed at The Field Museum in Chicago. To unlock this lesson you must be … Her vertebrae show signs of degenerative disease, but this is not always associated with older age. The illustration on the right shows "Lucy" in comparison with a modern human female. Shortly thereafter, he saw an occipital (skull) bone, then a femur, some ribs, a pelvis, and the lower jaw. In Ethiopia, the assembly is also known as Dinkinesh, which means "you are marvelous" in the Amharic language. Johanson assessed it as female based on the one complete pelvic bone and sacrum, which indicated the width of the pelvic opening. There are several indicators which give a fair idea of her age. The length ratio of her humerus (arm) to femur (thigh) is 84.6%, which compares to 71.8% for modern humans, and 97.8% for common chimpanzees, indicating that either the arms of A. afarensis were beginning to shorten, the legs were beginning to lengthen, or both were occurring simultaneously. As they explored further, they found more and more bones on the slope, including vertebrae, part of a pelvis, ribs, and pieces of jaw. The Lucy skeleton is preserved at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. All the ends of her bones had fused and her cranial sutures had closed, indicating completed skeletal development. Although her characteristics closely resembled that of chimpanzees, such as long arms and a protruding belly, the skeleton showed that she primarily walked upright, the earliest example of such a primate. Armed with these dates and bolstered by paleomagnetic, paleontological, and sedimentological studies, researchers can place fossils into a dated framework with accuracy and precision. The cranial evidence recovered from Lucy is far less derived than her postcranium. This fossil was later dated at more than three million years old—much older than other hominin fossils known at the time. In fossils this age, it’s unusual to find so many bones intact. Lucy's post-cranium skeleton expresses multiple features related to habitual striding bipedalism, including elements of Lucy's spine, legs, knees, feet, and pelvis. [1][2][3], The Lucy specimen is an early australopithecine and is dated to about 3.2 million years ago. Lucy was only 3 feet 8 inches (1.1 m) tall, weighed 29 kilograms (65 lb) and looked somewhat like a Common Chimpanzee, but the observations of her pelvis proved that she had walked upright and more in the manner of humans. Two weeks later, after many hours of excavation, screening, and sorting, several hundred fragments of bone had been recovered, representing 40 percent of a single hominid skeleton. Lucy is the name of the nearly complete skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis.She was the first nearly complete skeleton recovered for the species, found in 1974 at the Afar Locality (AL) 228, a site in the Hadar archaeological region on the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. She belonged to a species that shared both human and ape characteristics. Letter from Donald Johanson", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, "Ancient Skeleton May Rewrite Earliest Chapter of Human Evolution", 10.1130/0091-7613(1994)022<0006:AOLATF>2.3.CO;2, "Spinopelvic pathways to bipedality: why no hominids ever relied on a bent-hip-bent-knee gait", "Lucy's Flat Feet: The Relationship between the Ankle and Rearfoot Arching in Early Hominins", "Baboon bone found in famous Lucy skeleton", ASU Institute of human origins, Lucy's story, "UT study cracks coldest case: How the most famous human ancestor died", "Family tree fall: human ancestor Lucy died in arboreal accident, say scientists", "Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia", "Researchers Complete First CT Scan of Ancient Human Ancestor Lucy", "Famous Fossil to go on display in Times Square", "'Lucy' comes home: Ethiopia celebrates iconic fossil", "Becoming Human: Paleoanthropology, Evolution, and Human Origins", "BBC - Science & Nature - The evolution of man", "Lucy : American Museum of Natural History", National Public Radio "Science Friday" interview with Dr. Donald Johanson titled "Lucy's Legacy" originally aired on March 6, 2009, Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_(Australopithecus)&oldid=1023461077, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Amharic-language text, Articles needing additional references from November 2015, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 16 May 2021, at 14:41. [33] At the American Museum of Natural History in New York City a diorama presents Australopithecus afarensis and other human predecessors, showing each species and its habitat and explaining the behaviors and capabilities assigned to each. This new “Lucy’s child” specimen is quite a remarkable find and will yield significant observations. They marked the spot and returned to camp, excited at finding so many pieces apparently from one individual hominin. The bones were those of young female, approximately 20 years old when she died. To find more information about the course of human evolution, go to. Johanson recovered Lucy's left innominate bone and sacrum. Lucy‘s skeleton gave scientists their best clues yet to the proportions of Australopithecus, and revealed her to be surprisingly short-legged. The skeleton is rather complete and very well preserved. At Hadar, the size difference is very clear, with larger males and smaller females being fairly easy to distinguish. Still, Lucy’s discovery eclipsed nearly all earlier findings because of the extraordinary completeness of Lucy’s skeleton, making her one of the most important paleoanthropological findings of our time. Because she could walk upright on the ground and climb trees, she and other members of her species were able to use resources from woodlands, grasslands, and other diverse environments. Excavation, preservation, and analysis of the specimen Ardi was very difficult and time-consuming; work was begun in 1992, with the results not fully published until October 2009. The talus, in her ankle, shows evidence for a convergent big toe, sacrificing manipulative abilities for efficiency in bipedal locomotion. Donald Johanson's 1973 discovery of "Lucy," a half-complete skeleton of a previously unknown species of hominid, proved critical to understanding this aspect of … Scientists believed that species with larger brains practice bipedalism, but Lucy's was barely larger than those of chimpanzees. [20], Additional finds of A. afarensis were made during the 1970s and forward, gaining for anthropologists a better understanding of the ranges of morphic variability and sexual dimorphism within the species. Anthropologists have made much of the fact that adult members of Lucy’s species— Australopithecus afarensis —had skulls 20% larger than a chimpanzee’s. After a long, hot morning of mapping and surveying for fossils, they decided to head back to the vehicle. [12][13][14][15][1][2], By Johanson's later (published) accounts, both he and Tom Gray spent two hours on the increasingly hot and arid plain, surveying the dusty terrain. The greater trochanter, however, is clearly a derived trait, being short and human-like—even though, unlike in humans, it is situated higher than the femoral head. Her neurocranium is small and primitive, while she possesses more spatulate canines than other apes. As in a modern human’s skeleton, Lucy's bones are rife with evidence clearly pointing to bipedality. One very human characteristic that Lucy shared was a massive heel. Although she was classified as an ape, not a human, she had some surprisingly human characteristics. [3][16], In the afternoon, all members of the expedition returned to the gully to section off the site and prepare it for careful excavation and collection, which eventually took three weeks. Beginning in 2007, the fossil assembly and associated artifacts were exhibited publicly in an extended six-year tour of the United States; the exhibition was called Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia. Her distal femur shows several traits unique to bipedality. The lower end of a femur was found near it, and when he fitted them together, the angle of the knee joint clearly showed that this fossil, reference AL 129-1, was an upright walking hominin. [citation needed], A study of the mandible across a number of specimens of A. afarensis indicated that Lucy's jaw was rather unlike other hominins, having a more gorilla-like appearance. [9], In November 1971, near the end of the first field season, Johanson noticed a fossil of the upper end of a shinbone, which had been sliced slightly at the front. Facts about Lucy the Australopithecus 4: the characteristics of skeleton Lucy has a small skull.
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