Reconstruction of the physiognomy of Lucy, the specimen of Australopithecus afarensis found in Africa 41 years ago
Today Google celebrate with one of her beautiful doodle themed, the 41st anniversary of one of the most important discoveries always, the remains of an Australopithecus afarensis female known throughout the world as Lucy.
In fact, she was November 1974 when in Afar , in Ethiopia, the paleontologist Donald Johanson and his collaborators came across the skeleton of this 25-year-old specimen that lived over 3 million years ago; her name was given to her in honor of the famous Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
The 52 total bones found, allowed us to understand that Lucy was only 1.07 meters tall, she had a body weight between 29 and 45 Kg., Teeth similar to ours and simian skull; although she belonged to an already bipedal species, and therefore she was perfectly capable of standing on both legs and walking like humans, she still led a partly arboreal life.
Lucy certainly climbed trees to escape predators and ate, too, insects and lizards.
Perhaps this distant ancestor of ours died of exhaustion on the banks of a swamp, but since, fortunately, no animal tore her to pieces, her body was able to fossilize and largely reach us practically intact.
If you want to know more about Lucy, how she lived and how her discovery changed the course of prehistory, just click on the doodle by Google and you will see all the search results (Photo from:omodeo.anisn.it).