Since her public debut in 1978, Lucy has been on a first-identify basis with the area. No longer substandard for anyone from rural Ethiopia who had been an unknown for 3.2 million years or so.

Paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray had found Lucy’s fossilized bones just a few years earlier (SN: 1/4/75, p. 4). That spectacular 2d 50 years ago rapid upended how many scientists thought about human evolution. Till then, the history of our species changed into once drawn as an neatly-organized development, with one member of the colossal-brained Homo species resulting within the next. The famed anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, and later their son Richard, had spent decades excavating fossils that they mentioned supported that understanding. Lucy, who walked correct like a human however had a shrimp brain and other apelike aspects, didn’t fit in. Her existence proved that the epic changed into once more advanced — and much more attention-grabbing.

As Bruce Bower, Science News’ behavioral sciences author, experiences on this self-discipline, scientists knew of only just a few hominid species when Lucy’s partial skeleton changed into once found in 1974 (SN: 11/13/24, p. 18). On the sleek time, scientists watch bigger than 20 hominid species, together with Lucy’s Australopithecus afarensis. “Johanson calls that particular point in time the beginning put of a golden decade in paleoanthropology,” Bower educated me. “It changed into once altering the come each person thought.”

Even for these of us who had been reading about Lucy for decades, Bower’s retelling of the narrative is a take care of. Lore has it that she changed into once named after the Beatles tune “Lucy within the Sky with Diamonds,” which changed into once playing on repeat at a celebration in camp the evening of her discovery. Bower, a longtime Beatles fan, doesn’t shirk from additional invoking the Fab Four. He notes that other fossils found nearby helped Lucy high “the hominid hit parade with a chunk of help from her company.” And he uses the lyric “I thought I knew you, what did I do know?” from the tune “I’m Taking a survey Via You” to tackle sizzling-topic questions about Lucy, together with whether she climbed trees, what she ate and whether she and her compatriots aged stone instruments.

The gully the put Lucy changed into once found lies in a parched, treeless desolate tract. However when I survey at the photos from the 1974 dig, the of us toiling away in that warmth and dirt survey so happy. Presumably the photos were taken after they found Lucy, a predominant discovery made after weeks, months — who is conscious of, presumably years — of fruitless toil. It changed into once the day when they at last found a fossil that changed all the pieces. Or even the photos were taken ahead of the debut of our celeb hominid, and these smiling, dusty of us were beautiful happy to be doing the work.

On the sleek time, scholars of human evolution possess many more instruments at their disposal than did the crew in Ethiopia. That involves worn DNA prognosis that has revolutionized our skill to better identify hominid populations and the relationships between them, together with the genetic connections between Neandertals and most up-to-date-day individuals.

It’s no longer identified if Lucy and her form are amongst our advise a ways-off ancestors; like many issues within the glance of human evolution, it’s debated. However she will be able to count me amongst her many followers.