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The Conversation USA

Lucy, discovered 50 years ago in Ethiopia, stood just 3.5 feet tall − but she still towers over our understanding of human origins

  • Written by Denise Su, Associate Professor of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
imageThe reconstructed skeleton of Lucy, found in Hadar, Ethiopia, in 1974, and Grace Latimer, then age 4, daughter of a research team member.James St. John/Flickr, CC BY

In 1974, on a survey in Hadar in the remote badlands of Ethiopia, U.S. paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray found a piece of an elbow joint jutting from...

Read more: Lucy, discovered 50 years ago in Ethiopia, stood just 3.5 feet tall − but she still towers over...

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