On November 24, 1974, Donald Johanson and Tom Gray were riding in a Land Rover on the hunt for bones. It was hot and dry, and the two were tired from a long day of excavating fossils. As they coasted through a dusty gully, having taken a different route than normal, Johanson spotted the forearm bone of a hominid poking out from beneath the dirt.
Uncovering the ulna would lead to 47 other bones, including a skull bone, femur, ribs, pelvis, and the lower jaw, all of them belonging to a young adult female. She would quickly acquire the name Lucy after the Beatles song that played at the raucous campfire party celebrating her discovery.
Lucy is arguably the most important paleontological discovery ever made, and it’s expanded our understanding of early humans in a way that few discoveries ever could. The finding has allowed us to delve much deeper into what it means to be human, and we’ve learned a great deal since then.
