How old is lucy ethiopia

Within moments, he spotted a right proximal ulna forearm bone and quickly identified it as a hominid. Shortly thereafter, he saw an occipital skull bone, then a femur, some ribs, a pelvis, and the lower jaw. Two weeks later, after many hours of excavation, screening, and sorting, several hundred fragments of bone had been recovered, representing 40 percent of a single hominid skeleton.

Later in the night of November 24, there was much celebration and excitement over the discovery of what looked like a fairly complete hominid skeleton. The term hominid refers to a member of the zoological family Hominidae. While these species differ in many ways, hominids share a suite of characteristics that define them as a group.

The most conspicuous of these traits is bipedal locomotion, or walking upright. Her distal femur shows several traits unique to bipedality. The shaft is angled relative to the condyles knee joint surfaces , which allows bipeds to balance on one leg at a time during locomotion.

There is a prominent patellar lip to keep the patella knee cap from dislocating due to this angle. Her condyles are large and are thus adapted to handling the added weight that results from shifting from four limbs to two. The pelvis exhibits a number of adaptations to bipedality. The entire structure has been remodeled to accommodate an upright stance and the need to balance the trunk on only one limb with each stride.

The talus, in her ankle, shows evidence for a convergent big toe, sacrificing manipulative abilities for efficiency in bipedal locomotion.

The vertebrae show evidence of the spinal curvatures necessitated by a permanent upright stance. Lucy: A marvelous specimen By: Caitlin M. Citation: Schrein, C. Nature Education Knowledge 6 7 How much do you know about Lucy and why is she so special? Aa Aa Aa. A view of Hadar, Ethiopia. Discovering Lucy. How do we know that all of those fossilized bones belong to Lucy's skeleton?

How do we know Lucy was a female? Could Lucy's skeleton be small because she was a child when she died? How do scientists know the species to which Lucy belongs?

Do scientists know what Lucy looked like when she was alive? Figure 2: Lucy with a friend. Reconstruction of Australopithecus afarensis couple including "Lucy. Why is Lucy so famous? Is Lucy the "missing link" between apes and humans? Often this refers specifically to size sexual dimorphism, the average difference in body mass or skeletal size between males and females of a species casts : Replicas of fossils or artifacts, typically made of plaster or resin.

References and Recommended Reading Feldesman, M. Lucy's Legacy. Share Cancel. Revoke Cancel. Keywords Keywords for this Article. Save Cancel. Flag Inappropriate The Content is: Objectionable. Flag Content Cancel.

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