Lucy

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Lucy's skeleton ( replica )

Lucy (also: Dinkinesh, Amharic for: you miraculous ) is the name of the fossil part skeleton of a very likely female individual of the prehistoric man Australopithecus afarensis , which was found in 1974 in the northeast African Afar triangle in Ethiopia . The fossil is named after the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles named and is - like the so-called First Family - an age of 3.2 million years dated .

In the first description of Australopithecus afarensis in 1978, which was based on the LH 4 fossil from Laetoli, Lucy was given as an additional evidence ( paratype ). The archive number of Lucy's skeleton is AL 288-1 ("AL" stands for "Afar Locality", the place where it was found), and it is kept in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa . A copy is in the Semera Museum .

Find description

Along with Ardi , DIK 1-1 , the child of Taung and Little Foot , the fossil is one of the best-preserved skeletons of the early hominini species. This is probably due to the fact that Lucy's body was covered by sand and mud on the banks of a lake and river and was not destroyed by predators - there are no traces of teeth on her bones. In the preserved lower jaw, the 3rd molar (the so-called wisdom tooth ) has already erupted, but shows only minor signs of wear. Because of the shape of her pelvis and the degree of wear and tear on her teeth, Lucy is usually described in the specialist literature as an adult around 25 years old at the time of death; some researchers, however, interpret the find as male. From the relatively small size of the pelvic ring through which the child must pass at birth, it was concluded that the brain size of the newborns must have been roughly the same as the brain size of a newborn chimpanzee.

47 of their 207 bones - so it was believed by 2015 - were found, including a femur with a preserved head and neck, two shin fragments, parts of the pelvis and spine , several ribs as well as parts of the skull and both humerus bones ; the bones of the hands and feet are almost completely absent. In 2015, however, a conspicuously small vertebra was identified as probably originating from a baboon , while the remaining 88 fragments of the skeleton were confirmed to originate from an Australopithecus afarensis .

The construction of the pelvis and the thigh, in particular, show clear adaptations to the upright gait : When walking upright, the head of the thigh bone serves as a pivot point, through which the entire weight of the upper body is transferred to the two legs, while when walking on four legs, a considerable part of the Weight is on the front limbs. In bipeds, this leads to a thickening of the areas in the thigh neck that are potentially (if overloaded) breakable. Based on the measurements of Lucy's physique and fossil footprints discovered at Laetoli and attributed to Australopithecus afarensis , a computer simulation published in 2005 showed that Australopithecus afarensis moved at a speed of 0.6 to 1.3  m / s (approx. 2 to 4.5 km / h) could move completely upright. However, with a height of about 107 centimeters, Lucy was relatively small compared to other finds of her kind.

For research purposes, a high-resolution computed tomography scan of the bones was made in the United States in 2008 and processed into a three-dimensional computer simulation with the help of which the internal structure of the skeleton can be analyzed. In 2016, a skeleton study found that the significantly greater strength of the arm bones compared to the leg bones suggests that Lucy regularly put more stress on her arms than the leg bones. This was explained by the fact that Lucy climbed trees more often than walked the ground. In the same year, members of the same research group also reported evidence of greenwood fractures , from which it was deduced that Lucy had crashed immediately before her death (perimortal) from a height of around 13 to 14 meters on very hard ground. This interpretation is controversial, however, because u. a. by Tim White and Donald Johanson was argued that the observed to the bone characteristics are just as well with later (after death) during the fossilization to explain occurring fractures. According to the discoverers, however, post-mortem fractures appear unlikely in numerous cases in which sharp, clean fracture edges and small, chipped bone fragments were found that were still in place. Such a pattern is not known from fossils, here one would expect a displacement of the fragments.

Find history

Replica of Lucy's skeleton in Frankfurt's Senckenberg Nature Museum with reconstructed bipedal locomotion.

Lucy was discovered on November 24, 1974 in Hadar , Ethiopia by Donald Johanson , who was traveling to find place 162 with post-doctoral student Tom Gray that day . On the slope of a depression that had been cleared by a wadi that drained the Awash , first “the fragment of a hominid arm” and shortly thereafter “the back of a small skull” as well as a fragment of a femur in the immediate vicinity were found. According to Yves Coppens , the pieces of bones found that day initially received no special attention, as dozens of similar finds had previously been made in the region. Only a further, more detailed examination of the site revealed that further bone fragments apparently came from the same individual, i.e. an unusual discovery had been made. When the additional finds in the research camp were cataloged that evening, the Beatles tape Sgt.Pepper 's Lonely Hearts Club Band was repeatedly played from the tape recorder, which included the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds . Initially meant jokingly, the name Lucy quickly became the usual abbreviation for the find outside of the camp.

From 1975 to 1980, Lucy's bones were thoroughly analyzed by Johanson at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Cleveland , USA. Some casts were made of them and then handed over to the Ethiopian Antiquities Authority. Since then, the original bones have been kept in Addis Ababa in the Ethiopian National Museum.

As of August 2007, the original bones were exhibited in the United States. The recent transport abroad, the proceeds of which was supposed to finance Ethiopian museums, was criticized by many paleoanthropologists because they considered the risk of damage or even loss of the bones to be incalculable. Since visitor numbers in the United States were far below expectations, Lucy was stored in the Houston Museum of Natural Science from March 2009 . Lucy returned to Ethiopia on May 1, 2013 and has since been kept in the National Museum of Ethiopia ; the original is in a safe, a cast of the original is shown in the exhibition.

See also

literature

  • Donald Johanson et al .: Morphology of the Pliocene partial hominid skeleton (AL 288-1) from the Hadar formation, Ethiopia. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 57, No. 4, 1982, pp. 403-451, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330570403
  • Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey: Lucy: The Beginnings of Mankind. 5th edition. Piper, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-492-11555-1
  • Yves Coppens : Lucy's knees. Prehistoric beauty and the history of paleontology. dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-24297-3
  • Donald Johanson and Kate Wong: Lucy's Legacy. The Quest for Human Origins. Broadway Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307396402
  • Lydia Pyne: The Ascension of an Icon: Lucy in the Sky. Chapter 5 in: Dies .: Seven Skeletons. The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils. Viking, New York 2016, pp. 152-185, ISBN 978-0-525-42985-2

Web links

Commons : Lucy (Australopithecus)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Donald Johanson & Blake Edgar: Lucy and her children. 2nd updated and expanded edition. Elsevier Verlag, Munich 2006, p. 21, ISBN 978-3-8274-1670-4
  2. ↑ Donald Johanson , Tim D. White and Yves Coppens : A New Species of the Genus Australopithecus (Primates: Hominidae) from the Pliocene of Eastern Africa. In: Kirtlandia. Volume 28, 1978, pp. 1-14
  3. ↑ Donald Johanson: Lucy and Her Children. Pp. 24, 30
  4. ↑ For an overview see: Robert G. Taguea and C. Owen Lovejoy : AL 288-1 - Lucy or Lucifer: gender confusion in the Pliocene. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 35, No. 1, 1998, pp. 75-94, doi : 10.1006 / jhev.1998.0223
  5. ↑ Donald Johanson: Lucy and Her Children. P. 78
  6. ↑ Donald Johanson, Lucy and their children. P. 133
  7. ↑ Lucy had a bit of a baboon touch. In: New Scientist. Volume 226, No. 3017, p. 18, full text
  8. ↑ Yoel Rak : Lucy's pelvic anatomy: its role in bipedal gait. In: Journal of Human Evolution . Volume 20, No. 4, 1991, pp. 283-290, doi: 10.1016 / 0047-2484 (91) 90011-J
  9. ^ William L. Jungers : Lucy's limbs: skeletal allometry and locomotion in Australopithecus afarensis. In: Nature. Volume 297, 1982, pp. 676-678, doi: 10.1038 / 297676a0
  10. ^ William I. Sellers et al .: Stride lengths, speed and energy costs in walking of Australopithecus afarensis: using evolutionary robotics to predict locomotion of early human ancestors. In: Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Volume 2, No. 5, 2005, pp. 431-441, doi: 10.1098 / rsif.2005.0060 , full text
  11. ^ William L. Jungers : Lucy's length: Stature reconstruction in Australopithecus afarensis (AL288-1) with implications for other small-bodied hominids. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 76, No. 2, 1988, pp. 227-231, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330760211
  12. ↑ UT study cracks coldest case: How the most famous human ancestor died. On: eurekalert.org of August 29, 2016
  13. ↑ Christopher B. Ruff, M. Loring Burgess, Richard A. Ketcham and John Kappelman: Limb Bone Structural Proportions and Locomotor Behavior in AL 288-1 ("Lucy"). In: PLoS ONE . Volume 11, No. 11, 2016: e0166095, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0166095
  14. ↑ John Kappelman, Richard A. Ketcham, Stephen Pearce, Lawrence Todd et al .: Perimortem fractures in Lucy suggest mortality from fall out of tall tree. In: Nature. Volume 537, 2016, pp. 503–507, doi: 10.1038 / nature19332
    Did famed human ancestor 'Lucy' fall to her death? On: sciencemag.org from August 29, 2016
  15. ↑ Ian Sample: Family tree fall: human ancestor Lucy died in arboreal accident, say scientists. On: The Guardian from August 30, 2016
    Print your own 3D Lucy to work out how the famous hominin died. On: nature.com from August 29, 2016
  16. ↑ Prehuman Lucy fell from the tree and died. In: Die Zeit from August 29, 2016, accessed on September 10, 2016.
  17. ↑ Ewen Callaway: Lucy discoverer on the ancestor people relate to. Interview with Donald Johanson on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the find. On: Nature .com of November 21, 2014 full text , doi: 10.1038 / nature.2014.16379 .
    Johanson also mentions this date in his book Lucy's Legacy , published in 2010 , while in his bestseller Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, first published in 1981, and in From Lucy to Language (1996, German: Lucy and her children ), the date November 30, 1974 is erroneously stated .
  18. ^ Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey: Lucy. The beginnings of mankind. Piper, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-492-02738-5 (quoted here from the new edition from 1992, p. 16).
  19. ^ Public lecture by Yves Coppens on November 15, 2006 in the Senckenberg Naturmuseum , Frankfurt am Main
  20. ↑ Ann Gibbons: Lucy's Tour Abroad Sparks Protests. In: Science . Volume 314, No. 5799, 2006, p. 574, doi: 10.1126 / science.314.5799.574
  21. ↑ Lucy's museum tour threatens to become a spell in storage. In: Nature . Volume 457, No. 7231, 2009, p. 775, doi: 10.1038 / 457775f
  22. ↑ Carola Frentzen: World famous fossil: Ethiopia celebrates the return of "Lucy".. On: Spiegel Online from May 1, 2013
  23. ↑ Frank Patalong :The wonderful Lucy returns home.On: Spiegel Online from May 3, 2013
  24. ^ Lucy in the Ethiopian National Museum. ( Memento of February 3, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) On: newsonair.com , dump of February 3, 2018
    National Museum. On: lonelyplanet.com ,     accessed November 30, 2018