The hominid fossil known as Lucy was discovered in 1974. Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray found the partial skeleton on November 24, 1974, at Hadar in Ethiopia’s Afar Triangle.
Lucy is catalogued as AL 288-1 and belongs to Australopithecus afarensis. The fossil consists of several hundred bone fragments representing about 40 percent of a skeleton. Dating places her at approximately 3.2 million years old.
Her skeleton was scientifically important because it combined a small, ape-like skull with evidence of upright, two-legged walking. That combination supported the idea that habitual bipedalism developed before the major increase in brain size seen in later human relatives.
Lucy’s nickname came from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the Beatles song playing on the research team’s tape recorder after the discovery. She is sometimes confused with later discoveries from Laetoli, Tanzania, especially the famous Australopithecus afarensis footprints found in 1978.