'Lucy': Walking into the Past

A 3.2-million-year-old hominid who proved our ancestors walked upright.

The discovery of 'Lucy' (Australopithecus afarensis) in Ethiopia in 1974 was a landmark moment in paleoanthropology. Her skeleton, about 40% complete, included a pelvis that proved she walked on two legs. This find pushed back the timeline for bipedalism and fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the human evolutionary tree.