AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh (Amharic: ድንቅ ነሽ, romanized: dənkə näš, lit. 'you are marvellous'), is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40% of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. It was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle by Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Lucy is an early australopithecine and lived around 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of non-hominin apes, plus evidence of a walking-gait that was bipedal and upright, akin to that of humans and other hominins—which combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size. A 2016 study proposes that Australopithecus afarensis was, at least partly, tree-dwelling, though the extent of this behaviour is debated. Lucy was named by Pamela Alderman as the namesake of the 1967 song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by the Beatles, which was played loudly and repeatedly in the expedition camp all evening after the excavation team's first day of work on the Hadar recovery site. After public announcement of the discovery, Lucy captured much international interest, becoming a household name at the time. Lucy became famous worldwide as the story of her discovery and reconstruction was published by Johanson and Edey. Beginning in 2007, the fossil assembly and associated artefacts were exhibited publicly in an extended six-year tour of the United States; the exhibition was called Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia. There was discussion of the risks of damage to the unique fossils, and other museums preferred to display casts of the fossil assembly. The original fossils were returned to Ethiopia in 2013, and subsequent exhibitions have used casts. In 2024, after 50 years of follow–on research, the scientific community was of consensus that Lucy's species was not the earliest known member of the human family. And contrary to earlier beliefs that her species first walked upright in open savanna grasslands, later evidence suggests they walked and survived in grassy woodlands among deciduous trees. Her species adapted to various habitats over millennia, enduring severe changes in climate. Notably, she (i.e., her species) was not alone in her environment. "We have multiple [hominin] species in the same time period," said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.
Discovery
Background controversy Ever since the development of evolutionary theory in the early 19th century, biologists recognized that humans must be distantly related to all other species. Without transitional fossils, scientists of that time presumed that humans' closest relatives were the great apes. They speculated that the first traits to evolve after speciation would be related to increasing intelligence: big brains, tool use, complex language. Bipedality was not envisioned among the likely early traits. In 1924, Raymond Dart discovered the Taung child; which skeleton seemed bipedal (i.e., not like chimps), but lacked skull space for a powerful brain. But without further data to contextualize Dart's find, anthropologists could not agree on whether bipedality, intelligence, or some other trait first distinguished proto-humans from their great ape relatives.
Organizing the expedition French geologist and paleoanthropologist Maurice Taieb discovered the Hadar Formation for paleoanthropology in 1970 in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia; he recognized its potential as a likely repository of the fossils and artifacts of human origins. Taieb formed the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE) and invited three prominent international scientists to conduct research expeditions into the region. Under his directorship, these were: Donald Johanson (co-director)—an American paleoanthropologist and curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who later founded the Institute of Human Origins, now of Arizona State University; Yves Coppens (1934–2022, co-director)—a French paleoanthropologist and professor at the Collège de France, considered France's most prestigious research establishment; and Mary Leakey, the noted British paleoanthropologist. An expedition was soon mounted with an additional seven French and four American participants. In the autumn of 1973 the team began surveying sites around Hadar for signs related to the origin of humans.
First find In November 1973, near the end of the first field season, Johanson noticed a fossil of the upper end of a shinbone that had been sliced slightly at the front. The lower end of a femur was found near it, and when he fitted them together the angle of the knee joint clearly showed that this fossil, AL 129-1, was an upright–walking hominin. AL 129-1 was later dated to around 3.4 million years old—much older than other hominin fossils known at the time. The site lay about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) from the site where "Lucy" subsequently was found, in a rock stratum 60 metres (200 ft) deeper than that in which the Lucy fragments were found.
Subsequent findings The team returned for the second field season the following year and found hominin jaws. Then, on the morning of 24 November 1974, near the Awash River, Johanson abandoned a plan to update his field notes and joined graduate student Tom Gray to search Locality 162 for bone fossils. By Johanson's later (published) accounts, both he and Tom Gray spent two hours on the arid and increasingly hot plain, surveying the dusty terrain. On a hunch, Johanson decided to look at the bottom of a small gully that had been checked at least twice before by other workers. Nothing was immediately visible, but as they turned to leave, a fossil caught Johanson's eye; an arm bone fragment was lying on the slope. Near it lay a fragment from the back of a small skull. They noticed part of a femur (thigh bone) a few feet (about one meter) away. As they explored further they found more and more bones on the slope, including vertebrae, part of a pelvis, ribs, and pieces of jaw. They marked the spot and returned to camp, excited at finding so many pieces apparently from one individual hominin.
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