In 1973, Donald Johanson discovered the remains of the body of an Australopithecus - from the Latin australis, "the south", and from the Greek pitheco, that is monkey, comprising parts of both legs, including an articulation, dating back 3.4 million years ago. In November of the same year, in Afar (Ethiopia), Yves Coppens, Donald Johanson, Maurice Taïeb and Tom Gray discovered the remains of a twenty-five-year-old adult female exemplar lived at least 3.2 million years ago.
They called her Lucy, in honor of the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". She was 1.07 meters high, probably weighing between 29 and 45 kg, teeth similar to human ones, but still simian skull, with a skull capacity between 375 and 500 cm3; she was, however, a small specimen for its species. Subsequent findings show a marked sexual dimorphism, that is a large difference in size between male and female. The conformation of the skeleton parts gathered by the scholars shows that Lucy was perfectly suited to the biped locomotion, although it still led to a lifetime of arboreal locomotion. One may think that she would climb the trees to seek shelter from predators, to eat fruit or to spend the night.
She’s thought to have a social life and live in a group formed by adults and young. Her teeth were suitable for a diet based on vegetables harvesting and insects and lizards catching. Australopithecus had their heads with a flattened face, their frontal eyes allowed a stereoscopic vision, great to measure distances, to see hidden aggressors among the tall savannah herbs, but also to grab the branches of the trees on which they climbed and seized the fruit. Jaw and mandible beneath the skull, not protruding forward as in carnivores, are a sign of an adaptation to a frugal diet and to a semi-hard nourishment; this latter aspect is also shown by the very thick enamel layer, which makes the teeth hard and tough. This adaptation, with a slight decrease in the thickness of the enamel, has been preserved to the modern man.
Their small incisors show that they were frugivores (in zoology is called a frugivore a living being that feeds mainly fruits or seeds) and folivores (a generic term that refers to all the animals that feed on leaves)...
