This is why Lucy has been the face of human evolution for the last 50 years. Paleontologists unearthed the iconic fossil in 1974. Today, her legacy remains just as much cultural as it is scientific.

When Lucy was discovered 50 years ago, she was the oldest, most complete early member of the human family that had ever been found, with 47 bones representing 40 percent of the skeleton.

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.

Officially labeled A.L.288-1, Lucy extended humanity’s ancient history by almost a million years, and she remains a standard to which decades of discoveries have been compared. “Lucy is instantly ...

The 3.2-million-year-old fossil "Lucy" at Addis Ababa's National Museum, Ethiopia, on May 7, 2013. The skeleton was discovered by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson on November 24, 1974.

It's a skeleton that is more complete than Lucy and lived 150,000 years before Lucy, a child that died at the age of 2 1/2. And because of her antiquity and her completeness, ...

Lucy's Lasting Legacy. Special | 28m 46s Video has Closed Captions | CC “Lucy” is the fossil skeleton that forever changed our understanding of human evolution. Aired 11/06/2024 | Rating TV-G ...