In 1974, American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, led the team that discovered the Lucy fossil in Ethiopia, a 3.2 million year old Australopithecus. The find was a near complete skeleton, including ribs, arms, part of a femur, and part of the skull, which is rare for a fossil this old. It provided key evidence for bipedalism in the human lineage, in the span between the common ancestor of chimpanzees and gorillas and modern Homo sapiens.
137 words · auto-generated from the episode video
58:181974 discovery of the Lucy Australopithecus fossil. Yes. American paleon anthropologist Donald Johansson. He was a professor at Case Western Reserve University. He led the team that discovered this 3.2 millionyear-old oropithecus fossil in Ethiopia. This is huge because this is extremely old in the human lineage from you know our common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas to now homo sapiens sapien. >> Um it provided the transformative evidence for that transition to bipedalism because this is that transition. Um it was it was huge huge
59:00and it's uh almost >> complete skeleton. That's the other big one for something that's 3.2 2 million years old and something that's so rare to get like the ribs and the arms and even a femur from the legs and part of the skull. It was really really big deal.