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Lucy Catalog no. AL 288-1 Common name Lucy Species Australopithecus afarensis Age 3.2 million years Place discovered Afar Depression, Ethiopia Date discovered November 24, 1974 ; 50 years ago (1974-11-24) Discovered by Donald Johanson Maurice Taieb Yves Coppens Tom Gray AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh, is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40 ...
The Cradle of Humankind [1] [2] [3] is a paleoanthropological site that is located about 50 km (31 mi) northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Gauteng province. Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, [4] the site is home to the largest known concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. [5]
The oldest human skeletal remains are the 40ky old Lake Mungo remains in New South Wales, but human ornaments discovered at Devil's Lair in Western Australia have been dated to 48 kya and artifacts at Madjedbebe in Northern Territory are dated to at least 50 kya, and to 62.1 ± 2.9 ka in one 2017 study. [26] [27] [28] [29]
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.
Within minutes, Matthew Berger had discovered the first remains of early human ancestors - a clavicle, or collar bone. On the opposite side of the block, Berger quickly discovered a jawbone with a canine tooth of a hominid. The find was later identified as part of a partial skeleton of a juvenile hominid, around 9 – 13 years of age.
The oldest fossils are found on this surface, dated at 1.89 mya, while stone tools have been dated at 1.7 mya through the first use of K-Ar dating by Garniss Curtis. In addition, fission track dating and paleomagnetism were used to date the deposits, while amino acid dating and Carbon-14 dating were used to date the bones.
This was consistent with the concept that the then-oldest-known remains of Homo sapiens, dated to approximately 195,000 years ago and found in Omo Kibish, Ethiopia, indicated an eastern African origin for humans at approximately 200,000 years ago. The Ethiopian Omo remains we more recently dated to about 233,000 years old.
Human DNA recovered from remains found in Europe is revealing our species’ shared history with Neanderthals. The trove is the oldest Homo sapiens DNA ever documented, scientists say.