50 Years On: How the ‘Lucy’ Skeleton Discovery Reshaped Science

The 3.2-million-year-old female skeleton was a landmark find, and we’re still learning from her fossils five decades later

Jeff Tomik,

AARP Experience Counts

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Published November 21, 2024

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On Nov. 24, 1974, American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson co-led the discovery of a collection of fossilized bones in Ethiopia that turned out to be the remains of one of the oldest human ancestors. The 40-percent-complete female skeleton of the hominin species was a 3.2-million-year-old named Lucy.

Over the past five decades, researchers have found that Lucy was 3½ feet tall, walked upright despite a small brain and had a strong upper body, possibly from climbing trees. Hundreds of newer discoveries of fossils from her species, Australopithecus afarensis, have helped paint a picture of how they lived and evolved during their time on earth — estimated to be a million years.

“She’s a landmark discovery 50 years ago and today, and her impact on science, and also the public’s understanding of science, has not changed in its scope and significance but it has evolved over the last 50 years,” Dr. Emma Finestone, associate curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, told AARP Experience Counts. “Fifty years ago, Lucy was the oldest and most complete hominin ever known, so she pushed back the timeline of our ancient family tree.”

Johanson was the museum curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History when he made that monumental trip to Africa and found Lucy — who was named after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which was playing at the excavation site during the discovery.

Johanson brought her back to Cleveland, where the skeleton was studied for six years before returning to Ethiopia in 1980.

“At the time, she really inspired people’s interest in human origins and the sciences,” Finestone said. “And that was true for the general public, but she also inspired a new generation of scientists that went on to study hominins and find more fossils after her.”

Today, the museum has a large archival collection of Lucy and the record cast, the first and most accurate reproduction made from the fossils. It is hosting a yearlong celebration to mark the anniversary, with Lucy-themed events, public lectures and exhibits.

Earlier this year, Arizona State University hosted a symposium to discuss Lucy’s impact on the understanding of human evolution.

Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the director of the Institute of Human Origins and a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at the university, told AARP Experience Countsthat one of the main takeaways from the event was the need to support local infrastructure of the institutions in the countries where the fossils are found, which he said will define the future of paleoanthropology.

“Her discovery inspired many more explorations in the region and elsewhere, resulting in the discovery of very important fossils,” said Haile-Selassie, who himself went to Ethiopia's Afar region and found a site that was 3 million to 4 million years old.

While there have been many more hominins discovered since Lucy, some dating back more than 6 million years, she remains the standard.

“She serves as a benchmark for interpreting all new fossil hominins,” Finestone said. “When you find a new fossil, in order to figure out where it fits on the family tree of hominins and in order to understand how to study that fossil, you have to compare it to what’s known and exists and what people have previously studied.”

Despite the half-century of research, there is still a lot more to learn from Lucy. How she died, if she used tools and whether giving birth as a biped was difficult are all still hotly debated topics.

“Fifty years ago, the perspective was that human evolution was this nice neat linear transition from chimpanzees to humans. … There are those classic evolution illustrations that show that,” Finestone said. “And Lucy was the turning point that helped us understand that our evolutionary history isn’t one of missing links from a chimpanzee to a human progression.

“I think Lucy’s legacy is helping us understand the diversity of our family tree and how behaviors arose in unexpected ways. … Lucy helped us understand that things weren’t neat, things were complicated, and that makes more sense for humans as a very complicated animal.”

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Jeff Tomik graduated from James Madison University with a B.A. in journalism and worked for publications in the Washington, D.C., area from 2007, spending 11 years at The Washington Post, where he was a multiplatform editor. He is currently an assistant editor at PhillyVoice.

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