Lucy’s discovery transformed our understanding of human origins. Don Johanson, who unearthed the Australopithecus afarensis ...

Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis specimen, consists of 47 bones, constituting approximately 40% of a single skeleton. Discovered by American paleoanthropologist Donald ...

In 1974, on a survey in Hadar in the remote badlands of Ethiopia, U.S. paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray found a piece of an elbow joint jutting from the dirt in a ...

Long before the first members of the Homo genus appeared on Earth, a group of ancient ape-like hominins called Australopithecines may have already developed the manual dexterity to use tools.

As the oldest and most complete hominin skeleton at the time of her discovery, Lucy became the poster child for Australopithecus afarensis and the unofficial mother of all humans. But her legacy ...

Australopithecus afarensis. “We knew that because it was so complete it was important, but I didn’t realise it would actually launch a new species,” says Johanson. Lucy’s anatomy provided ...

As the University of Boston anthropologist explains, the fossil "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) had a more difficult birth process than A. sediba, in terms of a tighter fit between the foetus ...

A 3D polygonal model, guided by imaging scan data and muscle scarring, reconstructing the lower limb muscles of the Australopithecus afarensis fossil AL 288-1, known as ‘Lucy’.