On This Day: Lucy is discovered

It was On This Day in 1974 that Lucy was found! Lucy lived 3.2 million years ago in the area now known as Ethiopia. She walked upright. She was a fully grown adult female, although she was just under four foot tall.

Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray in Ethiopia at the site of Hadar. The two archeologists took a different route back to their vehicle and noticed a right proximal ulna belonging to a hominid. In the next two weeks, several hundred bone fragments were found, adding up to 40% of a single skeleton.

A hominid is a member of the Hominidae family. That zoological family consists of the species originating after the human/African ape ancestral spirit, according to the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

Source

Lucy’sStory. Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University.

On This Day is a prompt to further explore historical events.

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