Lucy (Australopithecus)

Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1. This is a fossil discovery of about 40% of the skeleton of a female Australopithecus afarensis. There are several hundred pieces of bone. The discovery was made in 1974, at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

Lucy

Catalog no.	AL 288-1
Common name	Lucy
Species	Australopithecus afarensis
Age	3.2 million years
Place discovered	Afar Depression, Ethiopia
Date discovered	November 24, 1974
Discovered by	Johanson and Gray [1]

This discovery gave us much scientific evidence. Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago^[2] and is a hominid.

The skeleton shows that Lucy had a small skull capacity, like an ape, but also that she walked upright like a human. This supported the view that bipedalism came before the increase in brain size in human evolution. Those features are true of all australopithecines.^[3][4]