Lucy (Australopithecus)

Lucy is the nickname of a famous partial fossil skeleton of a female *Australopithecus afarensis* specimen, catalogued as AL 288-1.

Lucy is the nickname of a partial fossil skeleton of a female *Australopithecus afarensis* specimen, catalogued as AL 288-1. She was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and lived about 3.2 million years ago. Lucy is one of the best-known early hominin fossils and has been important in studies of human evolution, especially bipedal walking.

Discovery

Lucy was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in Ethiopia by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray. The nickname came from the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which the team had been listening to after the discovery.

Classification

Lucy is usually classified as *Australopithecus afarensis*, an early hominin species that lived in eastern Africa. The fossil is also identified by the specimen number AL 288-1.

Anatomy and significance

Lucy is important because her bones show a combination of ape-like features, such as a small brain, and human-like features suited to walking upright. This helped support the idea that bipedalism evolved before major brain expansion in human evolution.

Current curation

Lucy is held in Ethiopia and has been displayed publicly in limited exhibitions. Sources identify her as a major scientific and cultural landmark in paleoanthropology.