Lucy is a young female fossil of Australopithecus afarensis that lived around 3.2 million years ago.
On the Afar desert in Ethiopia, anthropologist Donald Johanson and his student Thomas Gray were taking a walk when they saw bits and pieces of fossil bone. They tried to put it together and it joined perfectly! They named it Lucy after the song on their radio “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” by The Beatles.
Lucy was around three and half feet in height, very short, only about the height of a 7 year old kid. She was about 25 years old when she died.
The cast of Lucy is displayed in various museums. I saw it last year at the Field Museum, Chicago.
Australopithecus afarensis was one of the first apes to walk upright.
Anay Ganesh 