Lucy (hominid)

Rare card · No. 28300

AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh (Amharic: ድንቅ ነሽ, romanized: dənqə näš, lit. 'you are marvellous'), is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40% of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. It was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle by Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Lucy is an early australopithecine and lived around 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of non-hominin apes, plus evidence of a walking-gait that was bipedal and upright, akin to that of humans and other hominins—which combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size. A 2016 study proposes that Australopithecus afarensis was, at least partly, tree-dwelling, though the extent of this behaviour is debated. Lucy was named by Pamela Alderman as the namesake of the...

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