The A. afarensis foot fossil, about the size of an adult human thumb, comes from a child’s partial skeleton previously excavated at Dikika, Ethiopia (SN: 9/23/06, p. 195).

Analysis of Lucy’s fossil over the past 20 years has suggested that she and others of her species walked upright. But lead study author Dr. Ashleigh L.A. Wiseman, ...

In his view, traits of that fossil indicate that one branch of Lucy’s species evolved into the first members of the genus Homo, and eventually gave rise to H. sapiens (SN: 3/4/15).

Lucy quickly became a celebrity of the fossil record. The search for human ancestors . As a kid growing up in Connecticut, Johanson got a book from a neighbor that planted an electrifying idea: ...

This post is in partnership with History Today. The article below was originally published at History Today. It is hard to find a fossil more famous than “Lucy.” Regardless of how much a ...

Lucy’s discovery transformed our understanding of human origins. Don Johanson, who unearthed the Australopithecus afarensis remains in 1974, recalls the moment he found the iconic fossil.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson, about the 50th anniversary of his biggest discovery, Lucy, an early human ancestor.

The 3.2-million-year-old fossilized remains of Lucy, the most intact human ancestor ever discovered, began a six-year tour of U.S. museums last Friday. The scientific community has expressed ...

How to go on a fossil hunt with kids. Dinosaur digs and other searches can be epic adventures. Here’s what you need to know to turn children into amateur paleontologists.

Lucy, that starlet among ancient human relatives, may have shared the stage with a hominin very different from herself, a newly found fossil suggests. Out of the Ethiopian desert, researchers have ...