It is 47 years since the discovery of Lucy, ‘Mother of humanity’

This November 24 marks the 47th anniversary of the discovery of ‘Lucy‘, whose skeleton is the oldest known Australophithecus, and has been considered the’ Mother of Humanity ‘.

The finding of ‘Lucy‘by the American paleontologist Donald Johansson in 1974 it was the end of a continuous debate, in which some experts thought that the earliest origins of man were in Africa, but where he really became human was Europe.

Lucy showed that it occurred in East Africa, and more specifically in the Afar region (Ethiopia), where it was found. It made it possible to say conclusively that upright walking has existed for 3.5 million years, a great leap in understanding the sequence of events in human evolution.

Evidence that this species walked upright was discovered in the pelvis, strikingly different from that of a four-legged animal such as a chimpanzee. These have a narrow pelvis with the hip bones facing forward, while Lucy’s is like the current one, wide with the hip bones forming a bowl, Wikipedia reports.

The body of Lucy it still had relatively short legs and relatively long arms, which is the kind of anatomy that can be seen most in tree-living species. So it was an important bridge between what are now considered ancient and modern species.

Lucy’s species, ‘Australopithecus afarensis’, it became extinct about 3 million years ago and the oldest evidence of Homo is 2,300,000 years ago. “That means that the emergence of our own genus occurred between 2.3 and 3 million years ago, and that is where we are looking.”recently declared Donald Johansson, its discoverer.

Johansson has explained that the name ‘Lucy’ comes from that they were listening to a tape of The Beatles when they found the remains, and that among the songs was’Lucy in the sky with diamonds’.