“Lucy” Walked Upright 3.2 Million Years Ago, New 3D Model Shows


“Lucy” Walked Upright 3.2 Million Years Ago, New 3D Model Shows

Scientists have recently looked at the bones of “Lucy,” a world-famous set of early human ancestor remains, and found further evidence that she could walk upright just as effectively as modern-day Homo sapiens. Considering she wandered about Earth 3.2 million years ago, that’s a remarkable discovery that helps to illuminate one of the most important steps in human evolution: bipedalism. 

The remains of Lucy were discovered in 1974 in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia. She was named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was repeatedly playing on the researchers’ speakers during their expedition. 

She belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis, a distant relative of us that lived in East Africa around 3 to 4 million years ago. To our eyes, the species would like fairly “primitive” – Lucy was just 1 meter (3.5 feet) tall, weighed around 28 kilograms (61 pounds), and had a tiny brain roughly a third of the size of ours. 

This good-looking gal is a reconstruction of Lucy, one of the most famous ancient human ancestor remains ever found. 
Image credit: Carlos Lorenzo/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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