It is a very popular belief that we human beings, a part of Homo genus along with other extinct species including Neanderthals have a common ancestor from Australopithecus genus.īut we are not sure which species of Australopithecus was our common ancestor. Richard Leakey, paleoanthropologist, suggests that Lucy was completely a separate species. Johanson says that as Lucy’s characteristics are found to be very primitive, and hence our understanding of the period in which modern man split from his ancestor apes needs to be reconsidered.īut his view is challenged by others. Lucy had lived in a period well before the hominids split into two branches, the one that led to modern human beings and the other that became extinct. This may lead to a conclusion that bipedalism is a very crucial factor in making us what we are today, not just our brain’s capability. So far our understanding is that our ability to walk on two legs increased with a more developed brain.īut, Lucy stood erect, even though she had a smaller, lesser developed brain. Till then scientists believed that bipedalism in human beings developed with increased brain size, which was challenged by this discovery. Lucy was found to be a 20-year-old female having a brain size one-third of modern man. There have been a number of discoveries about the Australopithecus species thereafter until November 24, 1974, the most significant of them all, Lucy was found. The skull of the species was found in the year 1924 and on examination showed the characteristics of both apes and human beings and studies on its spinal cord revealed that the species walked with two legs upright. But this was not the first time scientists discover about Australopithecus afarensis. Two years before this discovery, in 1972 the duo found 2.8 million year old stone tools used for hunting in the same region of Ethiopia. It was named Lucy because of the Beatle’s song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ that was played many times in the camp at the excavation site in Ethiopia after the first day’s work. The fossil remains of the species is dated back to 3.2 million years. Lucy is a collection of 47 bones that forms 40% of the total skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis, founded by paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray in the year 1974 near a village called Hadar in Ethiopia. Thus, Lucy, the Australopithecus is the forefather of the genus Homo and the successor of the Apes that walked in four limbs. There lies a transition stage between the two and this gap is filled by the species that resembled Lucy. Apes walked with four limbs, that is, they are tetrapod whereas human beings walk with two legs, which is known as bipedal.
There is a difference between apes and Homo sapiens.
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