The real “Lucy” skeleton, the famous 3.2-million-year-old specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, resides within a specially constructed safe at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.
Sophisticated molds of the bones, however, can be found all over the world, in such places as Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins, where they are used for scientific study. Or you can buy your own from Bone Clones, Inc., for $7,495, assuming you want the articulated version that fills in the incomplete skeleton.
Open source 3D scans are also available and formed the basis of a new study that seeks to settle the decades-old debate over whether Lucy walked upright, like a modern-day human, or in “a crouching waddle” like a chimpanzee, according to a press release. The paper throws its lot in with a consensus that has emerged over the past 20 years favoring the upright hypothesis.
