2008 Woodie Awards
'Lucy' Discoverer Announces Second Find at UCM
Raghvendra Singh/Muleskinner
Issue date: 9/28/06 Section: News
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On the same day Zeresenay Alemseged, an Ethiopian scientist and post-doctoral researcher under Johanson, announced his discovery of a remarkably complete skeleton of a 3-year-old female, who lived 3.3 million years ago.
"The new site was four kilometers from the 'Lucy' site. Recovery of a sub-adult specimen allows a benchmark of comparison to adult specimens, the famous 'Lucy' fossils of adults, to calculate rates of maturation, growth and development in very early humans," said John Sheets, chair of the Department of Anthropology and History.
According to the Associated Press, "Lucy" and the newfound fossil is of the australopithecus afarensis species, which lived in Africa between 4 million and 3 million years ago.
Johanson discovered "Lucy" in 1974. "Lucy" lived about 100,000 years after the new fossil, nicknamed "Selam," which means "peace" in several Ethiopian languages.
Johanson discussed his 1974 trip and his educational experience to UCM students.
"When I was in high school, I had performed poorly in my Standardized Aptitude Test (SAT), which led my counselor to advise me to not go to college," Johanson said.
He ignored the counselor's advice, pursued higher education and received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.
"Doing your Ph.D. is like going through the worst experience of life, but then, the very next year of completing my doctorate program, I mapped out my trip to Ethiopia and found something remarkably interesting," Johanson said.
There, Johanson discovered 'Lucy,' the fossilized remains of the oldest known human ancestor, until now.
In 1974 Ethiopia was under the belt of a number of civil wars.
"Sleeping under an open tent, fearing the attack of the rival tribes, looking into the stars, we imagined each day what was coming next," Johanson said, "and then came Lucy, not just a fossil about 3.6 million-years-old, but also an ancestor who changed the course of the study of mankind."
"Today, biology is leaps and bounds beyond Darwin in 1859 when he published, 'The Origin of Species,' but the basics of biology has revolved around it asking questions about our ancestors and our evolution," Johanson said.
He said the reason he was interested in traveling to Africa to look for fossils was because Darwin had first alluded to it.
"Years back, Darwin had predicted that Africa would be the place where the first fossils would be found," Johanson said.
"Dr. Johanson's discovery of 'Lucy' and the more recent one by the Ethiopian scientist have helped us to provide with more conclusive evidence of our ancestors and the story of our evolution," said April Sutton, a graduate student in biological and environmental sciences.
Alemseged's work was funded by the National Geographic Society, the institute of Human Origins at the Arizona State University, where Johanson is director, the Leakey Foundation and the Planek institute.
"Today, all of us are united with a common thing from the past, and it is important to look back into this past, so the mysteries that buried our history wouldn't be repeated," Johanson said.
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