Who is Lucy the Australopithecus?

Lucy was found by Johanson and Gray on the 24 November, 1974, at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. They had taken a Land Rover out that day to map in another locality. After a long, hot morning of mapping and surveying for fossils, they decided to head back to the vehicle. Johanson suggested taking an alternate route back to the Land Rover, thanks to a nearby stream. Within moments, he spotted a right proximal ulna (forearm bone) and simply define it as a hominid. Shortly thereafter, he saw an occipital (skull) bone, then a femur, some ribs, a pelvis, and the lower chin. Two weeks later, after many hours of sorting, screening, and , excavation several hundred fragments of bone had been recovered, representing 40 percent of a single hominid skeleton.