Fifty years after Lucy's discovery, what do we know about our ancestor? – Liberation

On November 24, 1974, 52 bone fragments from an Australopithecus were discovered. Is she our first ancestor? Was she still climbing trees? How did she die? Did she use any tools? In half a century, the famous skeleton has provided as many answers as new questions.

It was November 24, 1974 and, like this year, it was a Sunday. On the banks of a river in northern Ethiopia, around thirty local, American and French paleontologists were busy excavating a site called Hadar, looking for bones preserved underground for around 3 million years. . Among the bones of antelopes, cattle and giraffes, human-looking remains emerged. A few ribs, fragments of an arm, a jaw, part of a pelvis… The skeleton of an australopithecus, which the researchers named Lucy in a famous homage to the Beatles song they were listening to that evening, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.

This discovery shook up our understanding of human evolution…and it was just the beginning. Fifty years later, theAustralopithecus afarensis – Lucy’s species – always constitutes “one of the most important species in the history of human evolution”, estimates its discoverer, Donald Johanson, in an anniversary article that he co-signed in For Science. What have we learned, from yesterday to today?

1974: the small-brained biped and the creation of the australopithecines

When American paleontologist Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray spot Lucy's first bones, they understand that they have just stumbled upon a gold mine. “We looked at the slope of the ravine, and it was incredible, there was a m