When Lucy, the world's most well-known fossil, was discovered sticking out of a shallow Ethiopian stream bed in 1974, she provided new insight about life for early human ancestors 3.18 million years ago. The image of her skeleton -- which is estimated to be 40% complete and considered the best representation of her species, Australopithecus afarensis -- became iconic.
But how did she come to rest in that shallow stream? Lucy just might be considered one of the world's oldest cold cases.
Forty-two years after the discovery, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin now believe that she was found in proximity to where she died, and that she fell from a great height to her death.
"When we think about any of the fossils that we work on, we know in every instance that that came from an individual who was born, they grew up, and then they died," said John W. Kappelman, a professor of anthropology and lead author of a new study on Lucy. "But it's rarely the case that the skeleton actually preserves evidence of how an individual died. What we're proposing here is the first hypothesis that's out there, and we've had her for 42 years now, about how she died. I am not aware that anyone else has ever [done that]."
The original fossil and CT scans of fractures to her skeleton paint a more vivid portrait of what happened in Lucy's final moments, and although it was probably swift, it wasn't without pain. The new study that proposes the hypothesis reads like a coroner's report, making Lucy's stone-like bones seem more lifelike than ever. See below of more earliest humans millions of years fossils.
Homo heidelbergensis journey from ethiopia to spain,remains found in Spain and han china.
