Friday, June 25th, 2010

A Relative for Lucy

Parts of the hip bone (pelvis) as they were being dug out of the ground by excavation. Photo courtesy: Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

How well did 'Lucy' walk on two legs? New research says that upright walking may be an ancient skill. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe the discovery of a partial skeleton of a relative of 'Lucy,' the famous Australopithecus afarensis skeleton. The new find, named 'Kadanuumuu,' or 'Big Man,' is also an Australopithecus afarensis, but dates from 3.6 million years ago, compared to Lucy's 3.2 million years.

"We can now confidently say that 'Lucy' and her relatives were as proficient as ourselves walking on two legs," said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, one of the authors of the paper. We'll talk with him about the find.

Guests

Yohannes Haile-Selassie
Curator and Head of Physical Anthropology
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Cleveland, Ohio

Related Books

Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins

From Lucy to Language: Revised, Updated, and Expanded

Related Links

Segment produced by:Christopher Intagliata

Image: Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie excavating one of the six rib bones found during the excavation. The use of dental tools was absolutely necessary to extract these highly fragile bones.
Photo courtesy: Woranso-Mille Project

Image: Anatomically arranged elements of partial skeleton KSD-VP-1/1.
Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Liz Russell, Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Used with permission from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.