Lucy quickly became a celebrity of the fossil record. The search for human ancestors . As a kid growing up in Connecticut, Johanson got a book from a neighbor that planted an electrifying idea: ...

Donald Johanson excavating a fossil in 1975. (Image credit: David Brill) Finding Lucy. The modern story of Lucy began on Nov. 24, 1974, in Hadar, Ethiopia.

Lucy's fossil includes 40% of her skeleton, one of the most complete Australopith fossils found to date. Edwin Remsberg/Alamy Stock Photo. Analysis of Lucy’s fossil over the past 20 years has ...

Lucy the fossil has another nickname. In Ethiopia she is known as Dinkinesh, which means “you are marvelous” in one of the country’s official languages, Amharic.

Lucy’s discovery transformed our understanding of human origins. Don Johanson, who unearthed the Australopithecus afarensis remains in 1974, recalls the moment he found the iconic fossil.

In 1975, just one year after Lucy was found at Afar Locality 288, the Hadar team discovered more than 200 fossil hominin specimens eroding from a single layer of rock at nearby Afar Locality 333.

In his view, traits of that fossil indicate that one branch of Lucy’s species evolved into the first members of the genus Homo, and eventually gave rise to H. sapiens (SN: 3/4/15).

HOUSTON — The first-ever public display of Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old fossil discovered in Ethiopia, is scheduled for Houston in 2006, to the chagrin of some anthropologists who fear the ...

The fossil "Lucy" is unveiled in Ethiopia at Addis Ababa's National Museum on May 7, 2013. Jenny Vaughan / AFP via Getty Images. If we were to meet them in life, A. afarensis ...

Popular renderings of the Lucy fossil dress her in thick, reddish-brown fur, with her face, hands, feet and breasts peeking out of denser thickets. This hairy picture of Lucy, it turns out, might ...

Lucy's fossil includes 40% of her skeleton, one of the most complete Australopith fossils found to date. Edwin Remsberg/Alamy Stock Photo. Analysis of Lucy’s fossil over the past 20 years has ...