The Homo genus began approximately 2.3 million years ago with Homo Habilis, the first species in this lineage, which led to ...

More than three million years after her death, the early human ancestor known as Lucy is still divulging her secrets. In 2016, an autopsy indicated that the female Australopithecus afarensis ...

Item 1 of 3 An illustration of two of the seven molars from Australopithecus, unearthed in South Africa, that were sampled in new research exploring the diet of this important ancient human ancestor.

A. afarensis’s hypodigm, or group of fossils that belong to the species, is so large that researchers use it as a comparison when trying to figure out which fossils belong to which species, ...

And her remarkable species, Australopithecus afarensis, may have been our direct ancestor. Our discoveries about Lucy have transformed our understanding of humanity's tangled family tree.

When Au. afarensis was named as a new species in 1978, it was the earliest human ancestor ever documented, with an age range of 3.8 million to 3.0 million years ago.

Lucy was a member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, an extinct hominin – a group that includes humans and our fossil relatives. Australopithecus afarensis lived from 3.8 million years ago to ...

Australopithecus afarensis was an early human species that lived in East Africa over three million years ago. Shorter than modern humans, with an ape-like face and smaller brain, ...

She added: ‘Australopithecus afarensis would have roamed areas of open wooded grassland as well as more dense forests in East Africa around three to four million years ago.

Since then, researchers have been able to piece together that A. Afarensis, a hugely successful species, lived for around 900,000 years, between 3.9 and 2.8 million years ago.

Lucy was dug up in Ethiopia in 1974, and was determined to belong to the Australopithecus afarensis species. Almost 50 years on, new research could end a decades-long debate about how she would ...

The rare fossil, representing 40% of a skeleton belonging to a female Australopithecus afarensis, was named “Lucy,” for the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” ...