Lucy

On November 30, 1974, Donald Johanson made an astounding breakthrough. At the time, he was researching and on the lookout for new fossils in Hadar which is located in Ethiopia. Johanson was looking for new fossils all morning and only came across a few fossils that had already been found in similar form before. Tom Gray, a student that accompanied Johanson, desired to return to the camp for the day. Johanson agreed, but desired to make one last detour to a gully that had been previously searched beforehand. He came across a forearm bone that lead to the discovery of a skeleton, 40% complete, including the back of a skull, a couple of vertebrae, part of a pelvis and ribs. These portions pieced together to form a very peculiar organism. Johanson named her Lucy from hearing the Beatles song during his celebration of the finding. Although some may ask how one would even known if this species is a female or not. The reasoning behind determining the sex of Lucy was from examining her pelvic bone and her sacrum. All hominids that are females must have a wider pelvic cavity to give birth to large-brained infants. Lucy's pelvis bone fit the criteria with being awfully big. Also as soon as Johanson discovered Lucy, he knew immediately that she was not a human. Lucy had too many qualities that were too primitive to be under the genus Homo. Lucy is roughly 3.5 million years old. She is the oldest, most complete, best pre-served skeleton of any erect walking human ancestor that has ever been found. Although what can Lucy be classified as?

Australopithecus Afarensis derived from the place in Africa in which many fossils were discovered at, Afar. While Lucy was a prime example of an Australopithecus Afarensis, there are numerous fossils that fall under this species.