Yohannes Haile-Selassie

Nov 21, 2024 | theconversation.com | Gemma Ware |Mike Herd |Yohannes Haile-Selassie

On November 24 1974, renowned American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted “a piece of elbow with humanlike anatomy” poking out of a rocky hillside in northern Ethiopia. It was the first fossil of a partial skeleton belonging to , an ancient female hominin who took the story of human evolution back beyond 3 million years for the first time.

Nov 21, 2024 | theconversation.com | Mike Herd |Yohannes Haile-Selassie

Fifty years ago, the discovery of a partial skeleton amid the barren desert landscape of northern Ethiopia transformed our understanding of where humans came from, and how we developed into Homo sapiens. “Lucy” was first spotted on November 24 1974 by the American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and his student assistant Tom Gray.