Six things you must know about Lucy, the oldest discovered hominid

41 years ago, a team of archaeologists stumbled upon a vital missing piece that threw light on how humans came to be. They discovered the remnants of an ancient skeleton that belonged to “Lucy”, a hominid from the Australopithecus afarensis species, who lived in Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago.

So if you are wondering what Google’s doodle today is all about, here’s all you need to know about this landmark discovery in paleoanthropology. 

Lucy is way older than our first predecessor     

Lucy's species is called Australopithecus Afarensis and that is believed to have lived between 3 million and 4 million years ago. She is the closest primate to the Homo genus. Homo Habilis, the earliest form of Homo, is believed to have descended from Afarensis or subsequent species of Australopithecus.  The bottom-line is her family possessed this planet much before Homo Sapiens came on the scene about 200,000 years ago.

She got her name from The Beatles

After making the historic find, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson headed back to his campsite with his team. He put a Beatles cassette in the tape player, and the song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ came on, That’s when one of the group said he should call the skeleton “Lucy”. And that is how the priceless fossil got her name.

Lucy walked on two legs

A vital distinction between humans and apes is the way they walk. Bipedalism, the use of two rear legs to walk is a key distinction between the Homo genus and Pan, the family of chimpanzee species. But Lucy was different. Although her characteristics closely resembled that of chimpanzees, such as long arms and a protruding belly, the skeleton showed that she primarily walked upright, the earliest example of such a primate. Scientists believed that species with larger brains practice bipedalism, but Lucy's was barely larger than those of chimpanzees. Strange!    

Her species used their own customised cutlery

A discovery made five years ago suggested that Lucy’s species used crude stone tools to cut and eat meat. Damn! And scientists until then related tools and weapons to the early Stone Age. This discovery put estimates of our ancestors' first use of technology back almost a million years.

The 3.2 million year old fossilized remains of 'Lucy' Image Source: Getty

Her death remains a “mystery”

Standing at 1.1 metres tall and weighing 27 kilograms, Lucy was smaller than we are. She had grown to full adult size for her species but her skull was small and not unlike that of an ape, with scientists suggesting her facial features and structure could be similar to a gorilla. But this little one’s death is still a mystery. One of the biggest puzzles surrounding Lucy's skeleton is no one really knows how she died. Scientists conclude from her teeth degradation she was a mature but young female, but there is no indication that age was a factor in her death.

Lucy is back home

Lucy's bones are currently kept in a museum in Ethiopia, although they have toured across the US for six years from 2008 to 2013. And there’s more. Barack Obama also paid a visit to the ancient fossil on a trip to Africa earlier this year, and was permitted to even touch it, something usually reserved only for scientists. This video from The Telegraph, UK tells you how amazed President Obama was upon being introduced to Lucy.