Google Doodle celebrates Lucy the Australopithecus | Daily Mail Online: "Google Doodle celebrates 'Lucy': Animation marks the anniversary of when the Australopithecus skeleton was unearthed
Fossil dubbed AL 288-1 or 'Lucy' was found 41 years ago in Ethiopia
3.2 million-year-old bones changed the understanding of our origins
Lucy Google Doodle shows Australopithecus afarensis walking between a chimpanzee and a human to show the transition between the two species
By SARAH GRIFFITHS FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 13:12 GMT, 24 November 2015 | UPDATED: 13:26 GMT, 24 November 2015
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On this day in 1974, the 3.2 million-year-old fossil of a female skeleton named AL 288-1 or 'Lucy' was unearthed in Ethiopia - and it would later change our understanding of the origins of mankind.
To mark the 41st anniversary of this discovery, Google has released an animated Doodle.
It shows the previously unknown species Australopithecus afarensis walking between a chimpanzee and a human to illustrate the transition between the two species.
On this day in 1974, the 3.2 million-year-old fossil of a female skeleton named AL 288-1 or 'Lucy' was unearthed in Ethiopia. To mark the anniversary, Google has released a Doodle that shows Australopithecus afarensis walking between a chimpanzee and a human to illustrate the transition between the two species
According to analysis of her bones, Lucy is thought to have walked on two legs in what is now Ethiopia, 3.2 million years ago (the Google Doodle is pictured)
According to the analysis of her bones, Lucy is thought to have walked on two legs.
While her gait may have resembled ours, she had a small skull more similar to a chimpanzee's, which supports the idea that walking came before an increase in brain size.
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She was much smaller than us, standing 3.7 feet (1.1metres) tall when fully grown and weighed just 64 lbs (29kg) - making her between twice and three times as light as a modern British woman.
Despite being so old, her skeleton is 40 per cent intact excluding the hand and foot bones.
It is this, and her name, which Donald C Johanson, who discovered the fossil near the village Hadar in the Awash Valley, believes has made her so famous and likeable.
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Lucy was much smaller than us, standing 3.7 feet (1.1metres) tall when fully grown and weighed just 64 lbs (29kg) - making her between twice and three times as light as a modern British woman. A sculptor's rendering of how she may have looked is shown above
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Despite being so old, her skeleton (pictured left and as a 3D model right) is 40 per cent intact excluding the hand and foot bones, giving us a good idea of her height and posture
He has since unearthed 363 specimens of her kind, spanning 400,000 years, but Lucy was much older than other hominin fossils known at the time and expanded the field of research massively.
HOW DID LUCY WALK?
One of the most important features of the Lucy skeleton is a valgus knee, which indicates she walked upright.
Her thigh bone shows a mixture of ancestral traits such as a small femoral head, while the greater trochanter - next to the head at the top of the bone - is short and human-like.
Another indication that she sits between chimps and humans is her arms.
The length of her humerus to femur is 84 per cent, which compares to 71.8 per cent for humans and 97.8 per cent for chimpanzees.
Her skeleton shows Lucy had a lumbar curve – another indication she walked upright.
The palaeoanthropologist told Time that Lucy was named after the Beatles song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' which was popular with archaeologists at the camp and was played on repeat.
One of the researchers suggested the name for the fossil and it stuck.
Dr Johanson believes the non-threatening name helps people think of Lucy as a real personality and they 'can envision the three-and-a-half foot tall female walking around,' because her skeleton is so intact.
He said: 'She showed us conclusively that upright walking and bipedalism preceded all other changes we'd normally consider being human, such as tool-making.
'She gave us a glimpse of what older ancestors would look like.'
Since the discovery, it has become accepted that Neanderthals are not our direct ancestors and fossils have been found that are twice as old as Lucy, as well as 'hobbits' in Indonesia to make our family tree 'bushier' with lots of new characters being added.
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Dr Donald Johanson who found the fossils believes the non-threatening name helps people think of Lucy as a real personality and they 'can envision a little three-and-a-half foot tall female walking around,' because her skeleton is so intact. Australopithecus afarensis family are imagined in a museum exhibition (shown)
An even more complete skeleton of a related hominid, Ardipithecus was found in the same Awash Valley in 1992.
'Ardi', like Lucy, was a hominid-becoming-hominin species but is older, at 4.4 million years old.
The Lucy fossil is kept in Ethiopia, although casts are in many museums around the world and the original toured the US for six years, from 2007. "
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