Today’s Google Doodle is a good one for evolutionary biologists, for it celebrates “Lucy,” the largely-complete skeletal specimen of Australopithecus afarensis found 41 years ago today by Donald Johansen and his team in Ethiopia. (The story of how they found her is in chapter 8 of WEIT.) Lucy is famous for the “intermediacy” of her skeleton, which shows features of both her apelike ancestors and of more modern humans, for the completeness of the skeleton (see below), and for the early age, about 3.2 million years. She clearly belongs to the hominins—members of subtribe Hominina, which includes all the species on the “human” side of the divide between us and the ancestor of modern chimps and bonobos. That split actually happened about 7 million years ago—four million years before Lucy.
Two beefs from yours truly. First, the figure below plays into the “evolutionary progression” scenario of a one-way march toward modern humans, which of course isn’t true (our common ancestor with chimps evolved into non-bipedal chimps as well as bipedal hominins).
Second, the Time magazine headline explaining this Doodle looks like this:
While that’s technically correct, it should really have read “Lucy the australopithecine.” After all, there is more than one “Australopithecus: species, and she’s an A. afarensis if you want to be fully correct. Further, nobody would say, for instance, “New Google Doodle honors Charles Darwin the Homo.” (If anything, it would say “Charles Darwin the hominin”.)
Finally, there’s still a bit of controversy about whether Lucy was a fully bipedal species, though I think the evidence is quite strong that members of her species walked upright.
Here are Lucy’s remains along with a reconstruction of just the found bones in their proper position, and a then a reconstruction of the entire skeleton:
In the reconstruction below, the brown-colored bones are the ones we have, while the white bones are reconstrucitons. Note that this is shown in the assumed bipedal posture:
Go Lucy! Well done Google.
Some years ago, I had the privilege of being taken behind the scenes at the National Museum in Addis Ababa and allowed to view the actual Lucy skeleton fossils, not just the cast on display. I know there is some current controversy overy the actual completeness of the skeleton, but this experience was an honor I will never forget.
I don’t feel tempted to check AIG and the like, but I could well imagine them leaping upon an idea like that.
Should be a reply to the main article.
Whoops, wrong reply button!
After a day of “hobbysteinbrucking” on the spoil heaps around Solenhofen, I went eyeball to eyesocket with one of the 9 actual specimens in the little museum there.
There is nothing like meeting the actual specimens.
Eyeball to eyesocket to…? Archaeopteryx, maybe?
One of the nine … well, it was nine at the time. But those Archaeopteryx specimens seem to be breeding well for dead bones on limestone slabs. What’s the current count? 12 it seems.
Breeding, and very possibly speciating.. We’ve known for a long time that there was quite a range of size in the Archaeopteryx fossils. Now as we continue to have additional finds, we also have better ways of seeing into the fossils without destroying information during preparation. My “impression” is that some of the species and genera in synonymy will prove to be valid, with a modeestly diverse avifauna in Jurassic Bavaria.
While checking up on the body count, I saw at least two argued genera mentioned, and at least three suggested species in those genera. Which by dinosaur standards would be relatively good. Still an average of 3 to 4 specimens per species – probably better than the mode, if not the mean.
Its a shame the terminology was changed, “hominid” is a much better word than “hominin”.
Yes, that’s all I’ve got.
It’s way worse than that!
If you look at the wiki page for “Hominini” it says: “Not to be confused with Hominoidea, Hominidae, Homininae, or Hominina”.
Not to be confused?? How the heck is the non-expert supposed to be anything other than confused by such names??
Surely the names chosen should give us some sort of chance!
Let’s call them all Bruce to keep things clear.
But that wouldn’t be fair to the Sheilas, of which Lucy was one.
So what was Lucy’s Bruce called? Frank?
Is your name not Bruce, then?
I’m sure that our Latin scholars could inform you that the relative ranks are clearly indicated by the suffices in use, but I for one don’t have the foggiest, or even nebulous, idea which is which and have to search for a cladogram to get the relationships straight.
But if you were doing this 3 times a day for the half-decade of an MSc and PhD, it’d all come naturally.
The name wasn’t actually “changed”; it all depends on which taxonomic rank you CHOOSE to use in the hierarchical taxonomic scheme. Lucy is STILL a member of the family Hominidae (a hominid; the suffix -idae designates family rank in animal nomenclature). She is also a member of the next higher category, the Hominoidea (the superfamily that includes all of the living apes).
But hominin is used merely to place the species in a lower taxonomic category (tribe = Homininae, subtribe = Hominina). Often, one chooses a particular rank to exclude members of the next higher level. As PCC implies, hominin is a lower rank that excludes the other living members of the Hominidae, which these days includes the living African apes and the orang. As a hominIN, Lucy shares common ancestry with us much more recently than a modern chimpanzee does.
A student in my morning class just told me to be sure to see the Google Doodle today. I see why.
Tangential, but this reminded me of an off-the-wall movie entitled Lucy, in which the modern day Lucy meets the ancient Lucy – something that was likely missed by many who saw the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_%282014_film%29
Just a little qiestion: did our common Hominid ancestor (to Homininae, Paninae and Gorillinae) walk on knuckles? It is apparently Google’s opinion. I thought it was a derived character, which appeared perhaps even independantly in Gorilla and Pan (they use slightly different technics). And small children walking on four walk on their palms, like baboons.
This is a good point. The iconic image of progressive human evolution shows our ape ancestors as knuckle walkers, but I had read somewhere that that kind of walking is thought to be derived in apes after they separated from us. If that is true, though, then it seems to me that it evolved more than once. Continuing with that view: our ape ancestors would have been palm walkers (as monkeys are).
The really pertinent question is what form of locomotion was found in the common ancestor of humans and the two species of chimps seven million years ago. If knuckle-walking was a derived trait that evolved during the seven million years of independent evolution in the chimp lineage, does that mean it evolved independently (convergently) in the 9-10 million years of separate evolution in the lineage of the knuckle-walking modern gorilla?
So the use of “ape” in this context is misleading and only confuses the issue. The “apes” as a group NEVER “separated from us” – which would imply that humans are the sister group of all other hominoids. In fact, the chimps “separated” from the gorilla at exactly the same time as humans “separated” from the gorilla, i.e., at the speciation event that led to chimps and humans on one branch and the gorilla on the other. You can say that the human-chimp clade separated from the gorilla clade, or the chimp-human-gorilla clade separated from the orang clade, etc., but you can’t say that apes separated from “us”. I don’t think the locomotion of gibbons (which are apes) is terribly relevant to the locomotion of the immediate predecessors of the Lucy species!
Exploratorium website has an interesting article, “Evidence: How do we know what we know. Geology for fossil hunters” on the geology of the Afar triangle where Lucy was found. It shows the geological maps of the area.
https://www.exploratorium.edu/evidence/lowbandwidth/INT_geomap.html
The Wikipedia article says there was a layer of volcanic ash one metre below Lucy and then another layer 18 metres below. Did they drill down to find the one 18 m down or is it now exposed on a valley side formed by a slip fault?
Hadar picture gallery from 1993 -1994 field seasons:
http://faculty.washington.edu/ggeck/EcksGallery/EcksGallery%20copy.html
You’ve come a long way, baby…
Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
I quit smoking 3 years ago at 43…I was a smoker for 20 years or so. I’m really glad I quit, but must admit I miss it sometimes. I might pick it back up once the zombie apocalypse happens. 🙂
Congratulations. Do everything you can to avoid smoking. You owe it to the others in your midst…especially the young…keep healthy. If not for your sake, for theirs. Life is a continuum.
Thanks for the words of wisdom. I won’t go back now…it took me 20 years to figure out I wasn’t in my 20’s anymore. I’m happy to be free and more realistic with life.
The bottom photo shows a reconstructed Lucy with a left toe bone included [in brown]. From memory… I don’t think that bone was found at the Lucy site, but rather at another site a mile or two away.
I am of the opinion it shouldn’t be represented in the reconstruction as if that bone came from the same site – it’s almost certainly not part of the fossil skeleton of the individual named “Lucy”
The foot, the lower spine, and the mid-face seem to be interpolated. However, this is not that much of a stretch. I’ve got to give it a 95% correct.
I don’t understand what you mean
In what sense is it “95% correct”? Where does that number come from?
How does one interpolate a foot? Especially partially based on a toe bone that’s not part of the Lucy site or the Lucy skeleton?
I’m just pointing out the bits that are interpolated. Parts that are not found as skeletal remains. If some part like a right humerus bone is found, we know that the left humerus is a mirror image and so we can reliably give it an exact representation in building a complete skeleton. But, if the only foot bone we have is the first metatarsal on the right foot, the rest of the foot is largely guesswork.
It’s the left foot & like I said already that fossil metatarsal isn’t Lucy’s nor is it from the Lucy site
Got it.
Yes, it would be wrong to describe Charles Darwin as a “homo’. I’m sorry. I laughed, and that marks me as juvenile. I can’t help it.
” “New Google Doodle honors Charles Darwin the Homo.” (If anything, it would say “Charles Darwin the hominin”.)”
Pfft, my favorite “near-complete” hominid fossil will always be Nariokotome Boy.
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By coincidence, I am attending Don Johanson’s “Human Origins” course at edX. Highly recommended – despite having some technical details [that I love] the work load is half a day/week, and Don is a very good presenter!