fossil rewrote the story of humanity
Forty years ago, on a Sunday morning in late November 1974, a team of scientists were digging in an isolated spot in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
Surveying the area, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted canada goose outlet in toronto a small part of an elbow bone. He immediately recognised it as coming from a human ancestor. And there was plenty more. “As I looked up the slopes to my left I saw bits of the skull, a chunk of jaw, a couple of vertebrae,” says Johanson.
Canada Goose online It was immediately obvious that the canada goose outlet new york skeleton was a momentous canada goose outlet 80 off find, because the sediments at the site were known to be 3.2 million years old. “I realised this was part of a skeleton that was older than three million canada goose outlet in chicago years,” says Johanson. It was the most ancient early human or hominin ever found. Later it became apparent that it was also the most complete: fully 40% of the skeleton had been preserved. Canada Goose online
canada goose black friday sale Might Lucy be our direct ancestor, a missing gap in the human family tree? canada goose black friday sale
At the group’s campsite that night, Johanson played a Beatles canada goose outlet hong kong cassette that he canada goose outlet miami had brought with him, and the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” came on. By this time Johanson thought the skeleton was female, because it was small. So someone said to him: “why don’t you call it Lucy?” The name stuck immediately. “All of a sudden,” says Johanson, “she became a person.”
It would be another four years before Lucy was officially described. She belonged to a new species called Australopithecus afarensis, and canada goose outlet in new york it was clear that she was one of canada goose victoria parka outlet the most important fossils ever discovered.
But at the campsite the morning after the discovery, the discussion canada goose outlet london was dominated by questions. How old was canada goose outlet store near me Lucy when she died? Did she have children? What was she like? And might she be our direct canada goose outlet los angeles ancestor, a missing gap in the human family tree? Forty years later, we are canada goose outlet reviews starting to have answers to some of canada goose outlet online uk these questions.
buy canada goose jacket cheap View image of The Taung Child (Credit: The Natural History Museum, London) buy canada goose jacket cheap
canada goose store Though she was a new species, Lucy was not the first Australopithecus found. That was the Taung Child, the fossilised skull of a young child who lived about 2.8 million years ago in Taung, South Africa. The Taung Child was discovered in 1924 and was canada goose outlet sale studied by anatomist Raymond Dart. canada goose outlet toronto location He realised that it belonged to a new species, which he called Australopithecus africanus. canada goose store
The Taung Child was denounced as just an ape and of no major importance
Dart wrote: “I knew at a glance that what lay in my hands was no ordinary anthropoidal brain. Here in lime consolidated sand was the replica of a brain three times as large as that of a baboon and considerably bigger than that of an adult chimpanzee The Taung Child’s teeth canada goose jacket outlet uk were more like a human child’s than an ape’s. Dart also concluded that it could walk upright, like humans, because the part of the skull where the spinal cord meets the brain was canada goose outlet human like.
Canada Goose Jackets The Taung Child canada goose outlet edmonton was the first hint that humans originated from Africa. But when Dart published his analysis the following year, he came in for stiff criticism. At the time, Europe and Asia was thought to be the crucial hub for human evolution, and scientists did not accept that Africa was an important site. The Taung Child was denounced by the prominent anatomist Sir Arthur Keith as just an ape and of no major importance. Canada Goose Jackets
Over the next 25 years, more evidence emerged and showed that Dart had been right all along. By the time Lucy came along, anthropologists accepted that australopithecines were early humans, not just apes. So canada goose premium outlet upon her discovery, Lucy became the oldest potential ancestor for every known hominin species. The immediate question was: what was she like?
buy canada goose jacket Lucy had an “incredible amalgam of more primitive and more derived features that had not been seen before,” says Johanson. Her skull, jaws and teeth were more ape like than those of other Australopithecus. Her braincase was also very small, no bigger than that of a chimp. canada goose outlet vancouver She had a hefty jaw, a low forehead and long dangly arms. buy canada goose jacket
There’s no other mammal that walks the way we do
canada goose coats on sale For canada goose factory outlet vancouver Johanson, in the field at Hadar, it was immediately apparent that Lucy walked upright, like the Taung Child. That’s because the shape and https://www.pick-canadagoose.com positioning of her pelvis reflected a fully upright gait. Lucy’s knee and ankle were also preserved and seem to reflect bipedal walking. Later studies of A. afarensis feet offer even more evidence. canada goose coats on sale
As an upright walker, Lucy strengthened the idea that walking was one of the key selective pressures driving human evolution forwards. The first hominins did not need bigger brains to take defining steps away from apes. Extra brainpower only came over a million years later with the arrival of Homo erectus. Though big brains would clearly be important later, walking remains one of the traits that makes us uniquely human.
canadian goose jacket “There’s no other mammal that canada goose jacket outlet sale walks the way we do,” says William Harcourt Smith of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. “Without bipedalism one starts to wonder what would have happened to our lineage. Would we have happened at all?” canadian goose jacket
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Canada Goose sale She may have walked like a human, but Lucy spent at least some of her time up in the trees, as chimpanzees and orang utans still do today. It may be that upright walking evolved in the trees, as a way to walk along branches that would otherwise be too flexible. Canada Goose sale
Canada Goose Parka It’s not clear why Lucy left the safety of the trees and took to the ground. It is thought that savannahs were gradually opening up, canada goose vest outlet so trees were spaced further apart. But the real reason for heading to the ground may have been to search for food, says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, UK. In line with this idea, canada goose outlet toronto recent evidence suggests that australopithecines’ diet canada goose outlet winnipeg address was changing. Canada Goose Parka
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cheap Canada Goose Studies of the remains of food trapped on preserved hominin teeth show that several species, including Lucy’s, were expanding their diet around 3.5 million years ago. Instead of mostly canada goose outlet orlando eating fruit from trees, they began to include grasses and sedges, canada goose outlet uk fake and possibly meat. This change in diet may have allowed them to range more widely, and to travel around more efficiently in a changing environment. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose clearance Lucy herself may have been collecting eggs from a lake. Fossilised crocodile and turtle eggs were found near her skeleton, leading to suggestions that she died while foraging for them. canada goose clearance
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Canada Goose Outlet How did australopithecines process all these new foods? Later species like Homo erectus are known to canada goose outlet las vegas have used simple canada goose jacket outlet store stone tools, but no tools have ever been found from this far back. However, in 2010 archaeologists uncovered animal bones with markings that seem to have been made by stone tools. That suggests Lucy and her relatives used stone tools to eat meat. Canada Goose Outlet
Chimpanzees learn about tool use from their mothers
There have since been heated debates over whether or not the marks were really made by tools. But if they were, it is not really surprising, says Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Spoor points out that modern chimpanzees use several tools, for instance to crack nuts. So if chimps can do it, Spoor says we might expect that A. afarensis which was basically a “bipedal chimpanzee” could too. Chimpanzees learn about tool use from their mothers, and Lucy could have picked it up in a canada goose outlet store montreal similar way.
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