JANE MORRIS GOODALL, SCIENTIST & CONSERVATIONIST

Today, The Grandma has received terrible news. Yesterday, Jane Goodall, the English primatologist and anthropologist, passed away leaving an incredible scientific and human legacy. She wants to remember her and her work. 

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, 3 April 1934, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-
Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist.

Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in 1960. 

She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace. 

More information: The Jane Goodall Institute

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in 1934 in Hampstead, to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, a novelist who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

As a child, as an alternative to a teddy bear her father gave Goodall a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, and she has said her fondness for this figure started her early love of animals, commenting that My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares. Today, Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.

Goodall had always been passionate about animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey, the notable Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals.  

Leakey, believing that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behaviour of early hominids, was looking for a chimpanzee researcher, though he kept the idea to himself. Instead, he proposed that Goodall work for him as a secretary. After obtaining approval from his wife Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where he laid out his plans.

 

More information: My Life with the Wild Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall

In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. Leakey raised funds, and on 14 July 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be called The Trimates. She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of David Anstey, chief warden, who was concerned for their safety; Tanzania was Tanganyika at that time and a British protectorate.

Leakey arranged funding and in 1962, he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to Cambridge University. She went to Newnham College, and obtained a PhD degree in ethology. 

She became the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD there without first having obtained a BA or BSc. Her thesis was completed in 1965 under the tutorship of Robert Hinde, titled Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.

Goodall is best known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life. She began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1960. Without collegiate training directing her research, Goodall observed things that strict scientific doctrines may have overlooked. Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she observed, she gave them names such as Fifi and David Greybeard, and observed them to have unique and individual personalities, an unconventional idea at the time. 

More information: British Council

She found that, it isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow. She also observed behaviours such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and even tickling, what we consider human actions. 

Goodall insists that these gestures are evidence of the close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community, which can persist throughout a life span of more than 50 years. 

These findings suggest that similarities between humans and chimpanzees exist in more than genes alone, but can be seen in emotion, intelligence, and family and social relationships.

Goodall's research at Gombe Stream is best known to the scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians. 

More information: National Geographic

While observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively fishing for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of toolmaking. Humans had long distinguished ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as Man the Toolmaker. 

In response to Goodall's revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which supports the Gombe research, and she is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. 

With nineteen offices around the world, the JGI is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs in Africa. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots began in 1991 when a group of 16 local teenagers met with Goodall on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. The organisation now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries.

Goodall credits the 1986 Understanding Chimpanzees conference, hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences, with shifting her focus from observation of chimpanzees to a broader and more intense concern with animal-human conservation. She is the former president of Advocates for Animals, an organisation based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, zoos, farming and sport.

More information: Wanderlust

 

 

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans 

have been living for hundreds of thousands of years 

in their forest, living fantastic lives, 

never overpopulating, never destroying the forest.

I would say that they have been 

in a way more successful 

than us as far as being in harmony 

with the environment. 

Jane Goodall

LORENA FOSTER, THE REENCARNATION OF JANE GOODALL

Today, The Fosters and The Grandma have assisted a conference offered by Jane Goodall, the greatest English scientist, who is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees.

 

The family has learnt a lot about animals, especially, chimpanzees, and Lorena Foster has been so impressed by the talk that she has chained herself at the entrance of London Zoo to protest against zoos and in a favour of natural reserves.

 

Download Animals

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, 3 April 1934, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in 1960. 

She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace. 

More information: The Jane Goodall Institute

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in 1934 in Hampstead, to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, a novelist who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

As a child, as an alternative to a teddy bear her father gave Goodall a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, and she has said her fondness for this figure started her early love of animals, commenting that My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares. Today, Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.

Goodall had always been passionate about animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey, the notable Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals.  

Leakey, believing that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behaviour of early hominids, was looking for a chimpanzee researcher, though he kept the idea to himself. Instead, he proposed that Goodall work for him as a secretary. After obtaining approval from his wife Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where he laid out his plans.

In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. Leakey raised funds, and on 14 July 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be called The Trimates. She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of David Anstey, chief warden, who was concerned for their safety; Tanzania was Tanganyika at that time and a British protectorate.

 

More information: British Council

Leakey arranged funding and in 1962, he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to Cambridge University. She went to Newnham College, and obtained a PhD degree in ethology. 

She became the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD there without first having obtained a BA or BSc. Her thesis was completed in 1965 under the tutorship of Robert Hinde, titled Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.

Goodall is best known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life. She began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1960. Without collegiate training directing her research, Goodall observed things that strict scientific doctrines may have overlooked. Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she observed, she gave them names such as Fifi and David Greybeard, and observed them to have unique and individual personalities, an unconventional idea at the time. 

She found that, it isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow. She also observed behaviours such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and even tickling, what we consider human actions. 

Goodall insists that these gestures are evidence of the close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community, which can persist throughout a life span of more than 50 years. 

These findings suggest that similarities between humans and chimpanzees exist in more than genes alone, but can be seen in emotion, intelligence, and family and social relationships.

 

More information: National Geographic

 
Goodall's research at Gombe Stream is best known to the scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians. 

While observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively fishing for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of toolmaking. Humans had long distinguished ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as Man the Toolmaker. 

In response to Goodall's revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which supports the Gombe research, and she is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. 

With nineteen offices around the world, the JGI is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs in Africa. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots began in 1991 when a group of 16 local teenagers met with Goodall on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. The organisation now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries.

Goodall credits the 1986 Understanding Chimpanzees conference, hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences, with shifting her focus from observation of chimpanzees to a broader and more intense concern with animal-human conservation. She is the former president of Advocates for Animals, an organisation based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, zoos, farming and sport.

More information: Wanderlust

 

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans 

have been living for hundreds of thousands of years 

in their forest, living fantastic lives, 

never overpopulating, never destroying the forest.

I would say that they have been 

in a way more successful than us 

as far as being in harmony with the environment. 

Jane Goodall

JANE GOODALL AND THE CHIMPANZEES IN TANZANIA

Jane Morris Goodall

Today, The Grandma has stopped her English homework to pay tribute to one of the most important scientific of all times, an old friend and one of the most respected women in science: Jane Goodall. 

On a day like today, in 1960, Jane Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanganyika, to study social life of wild chimpanzees. Then, the legend started...

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, 3 April 1934, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in 1960. 

She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace. 

More information: The Jane Goodall Institute

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in 1934 in Hampstead, to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, a novelist who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

Jane Goodall and a little chimpanzee

As a child, as an alternative to a teddy bear her father gave Goodall a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, and she has said her fondness for this figure started her early love of animals, commenting that My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares. Today, Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.

Goodall had always been passionate about animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey, the notable Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals.  

Leakey, believing that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behaviour of early hominids, was looking for a chimpanzee researcher, though he kept the idea to himself. Instead, he proposed that Goodall work for him as a secretary. After obtaining approval from his wife Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where he laid out his plans.

More information: My Life with the Wild Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall

In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. Leakey raised funds, and on 14 July 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be called The Trimates. She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of David Anstey, chief warden, who was concerned for their safety; Tanzania was Tanganyika at that time and a British protectorate.

Jane Goodall and a little chimpanzee

Leakey arranged funding and in 1962, he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to Cambridge University. She went to Newnham College, and obtained a PhD degree in ethology. 

She became the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD there without first having obtained a BA or BSc. Her thesis was completed in 1965 under the tutorship of Robert Hinde, titled Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.

Goodall is best known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life. She began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1960. Without collegiate training directing her research, Goodall observed things that strict scientific doctrines may have overlooked. Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she observed, she gave them names such as Fifi and David Greybeard, and observed them to have unique and individual personalities, an unconventional idea at the time. 

More information: British Council

She found that, it isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow. She also observed behaviours such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and even tickling, what we consider human actions. 

Jane Goodall and a chimpanzee

Goodall insists that these gestures are evidence of the close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community, which can persist throughout a life span of more than 50 years. 

These findings suggest that similarities between humans and chimpanzees exist in more than genes alone, but can be seen in emotion, intelligence, and family and social relationships.

Goodall's research at Gombe Stream is best known to the scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians. 

More information: National Geographic

While observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively fishing for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of toolmaking. Humans had long distinguished ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as Man the Toolmaker. 

In response to Goodall's revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!

Jane Goodall and a baby chimpanzee

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which supports the Gombe research, and she is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. 

With nineteen offices around the world, the JGI is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs in Africa. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots began in 1991 when a group of 16 local teenagers met with Goodall on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. The organisation now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries.

Goodall credits the 1986 Understanding Chimpanzees conference, hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences, with shifting her focus from observation of chimpanzees to a broader and more intense concern with animal-human conservation. She is the former president of Advocates for Animals, an organisation based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, zoos, farming and sport.

More information: Wanderlust

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans 

have been living for hundreds of thousands of years 

in their forest, living fantastic lives, 

never overpopulating, never destroying the forest.

I would say that they have been 

in a way more successful 

than us as far as being 

in harmony with the environment. 

Jane Goodall

JOSEPH TRAVELS TO OLDUPAI, THE CRADDLE OF MANKIND

Joseph in Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of mankind

Joseph de Ca'th Lon has travelled to Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania. 

He wants to visit this place considered the cradle of mankind that has proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. This place holds the earliest evidence of the existence of human ancestors.

Paleoanthropologists have found hundreds of fossilized bones and stone toots in the area dating back millions of years, leading them to conclude that humans evolved in Africa.

Joseph has joined to the paleoanthropologist team that is still working there and he wants to share with us the last reports and news about it.

More information: The Olduvai Gorge Project

 

Mary and Louis Leakey studying skull fragments 

Olduvai is a misspelling of Oldupai, a Maasai word for a wild sisal plant that grows in the area. The gorge is located in the Great Rift Valley, between the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. It is 30 miles from Laetoli, another fossil-rich area. Olduvai Gorge was formed about 30,000 years ago, the result of aggressive geological activity and streams.

The steep ravine is about 48.2 km long and 89.9 meters deep, not quite large enough to be classified as a canyon. A river cuts through several layers to form four individual beds, with the oldest estimated at about 2 million years old.

More information: Leakey. A century of the family in East Africa

Louis and Mary Leakey are often referred to as the first family of paleontology, as much of their lives, and later the lives of their children, revolved around Olduvai Gorge. The couple met on a dig in England, and both worked briefly at the Olduvai Gorge before being married in England in 1937.

Louis was born in 1903 in Kenya, where his English parents were missionaries. He would often uncover prehistoric stone tools while he was out bird watching. After graduating from University in England, he joined a fossil-finding expedition to what is now Tanzania, which sparked his interest in human origins.

More information: The Leakey Foundation

Louis and Mary Leakey

In 1930s, the Leakeys found stone tools in Olduvai and elsewhere. Among their most notable finds were several extinct vertebrates, including the 25-million-year-old Pronconsul primate, one of the first and few fossil ape skulls discovered.

Political unrest in nearby Kenya forced them to put their work on hold, but they went back to Olduvai Gorge in the late 1950s. While they had focused on tools in their previous work at the gorge, they went back to look for further evidence of human life.

One day in 1959, Mary went out to work as usual, leaving Louis behind with a headache. She discovered fossilized parts of a skull and upper teeth of a type of hominin that had not been previously identified.

More information: The Smithsonian

Over the next several weeks, the Leakeys uncovered about 400 pieces of a nearly complete skull. There were similarities to other discoveries, including those in South Africa by Raymond Dart in 1924 and by Robert Broom in 1936. However, the Leakeys classified their find as new category of hominin, dubbing it Zinjanthropus boisei.

It was not the direct ancestor of humankind that the Leakeys had hoped for, but it brought the couple some notoriety and spurred public interest in the study of human origins.

They dated the discovery as having lived 1.75 million years ago. This made it the oldest hominin discovered to that point, although a lack of fossil-dating technology made it difficult to determine the age of Dart’s and Broom’s earlier finds. The combination of the works of the Leakeys, Dart and Broom made a convincing case that humans originally evolved in Africa.

More information: National Geographic

Homo Habilis skull

By 1960, Louis Leakey had become ill and Mary took over most of the operation. There were a number of developments during this period. They uncovered a well-preserved fossil foot that had arches, giving credence to the theory that hominins walked upright.

During this time, Mary Leakey and son Jonathan Leakey found another, smaller form of hominin that they called Homo habilis, translated as handy human, because it seemed he was able to use tools. This fossil was dated at about 2 million years old. This was confirmed when another son, Richard Leakey, discovered another Homo habilis in 1972.

This 1972 discovery also supported the elder Leakey's theory that there were several lines of hominins developing simultaneously and that the Homo genus did not evolve from Australopithecus. 

But the Leakeys were not responsible for what some scientists term the biggest and most significant findings at Olduvai Gorge. In 1986, a team of Tanzanian and American archeologists unearthed 302 bones and teeth belonging to a female that was determined to be about 1.8 million years old.

If you live in Barcelona or you're visiting the city, you can visit a very interesting exposition in Caixa Forum about Olduvai, the cradle of mankind.

More information: Caixa Forum, Barcelona 

At Olduvai, for 20 years, Mary and I had investigated and made 

a general survey of the overall geology.

Louis Leakey

HOMO ERGASTER: THE WORKING MAN

Homo Ergaster

Homo Ergaster, working man, is an extinct hominid species or subspecies, according to some authorities, which lived throughout eastern and southern Africa between 1.9 to 1.4 million years ago with the advent of the lower Pleistocene and the cooling of the global climate.

Homo Ergaster is sometimes categorized as a subspecies of Homo Erectus. It is currently somewhat controversial whether Homo Ergaster or the later, Asian H. erectus was the direct ancestor of modern humans. The genetic variability among modern Homo Sapiens is greatest in Africa, which suggests strongly that this is the area where the species arose and has had most time to accumulate variation. Homo Ergaster may be distinguished from Homo Erectus by its thinner skull bones and lack of an obvious sulcus.

Derived features include reduced sexual dimorphism; a smaller, more orthognathic face; a smaller dental arcade; and a larger (700 and 850cc) cranial capacity.

More information: Brad Shaw Foundation

It is estimated that Homo Ergaster stood at 1.9m (6ft3) tall with relatively less sexual dimorphism in comparison to earlier hominins.

Remains have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa. The most complete Homo Ergaster skeleton ever discovered was made at Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1984.

Paleoanthropologists Richard Leakey, Kamoya Kimeu and Tim White dubbed the 1.6 million year old specimen as KNM-WT 15000, nicknamed Turkana Boy. The type specimen of Homo Ergaster is KNM ER 992; the species was named by Groves and Mazak in 1975.

The species name originates from the Greek Ergaster meaning Workman. This name was chosen due to the discovery of various tools such as hand-axes and cleavers near the skeletal remains of Homo Ergaster. This is one of the reasons that it is sometimes set apart distinctly from other human ancestors. Its use of advanced, rather than simple, tools was unique to this species.

Homo Ergaster tool use belongs to the Acheulean industry and first began using these tools 1.6 million years ago. Charred animal bones in fossil deposits and traces of camps suggest that the species made creative use of fire.

More information: EFossils

To investigate the history of man's development, 
the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.

Richard Leakey

LUCY: AUSTRALOPITHECUS AFARENSIS

Lucy

Australopithecus Afarensis is one of the best known of our ancestors due to a number of major discoveries including a set of fossil footprints and a fairly complete fossil skeleton of a female nicknamed 'Lucy'.This species lived between 3.9 and 2.8 million years ago. Australopithecus means ‘southern ape’ and was originally developed for a species found in South Africa. This is the genus or group name and several closely related species now share this name.

The word afarensis is based on the location where some of the first fossils for this species were discovered – the Afar Depression in Ethiopia, Africa.

During the 1970s, two fossil hunting teams began uncovering evidence of ancient human ancestors in east Africa. One team, co-led by Donald Johanson, was working at Hadar in Ethiopia. The other team led by Mary Leakey, was over 1,500 kilometres away at Laetoli in Tanzania. Fossils discovered at the two sites were found to have very similar features and ages but they did not match the fossils of any species known at that time. A new species name, Australopithecus afarensis, was therefore created for them in 1978.

More information: Lucy's Story by Institute of Human Origins

This species is now represented by several hundred fossils from east Africa like ‘Lucy’AL 288-1, Knee AL 129 1a + 1b, LH 4, The ‘First Family’, ‘Selam’ or ‘Lucy’s baby and ‘Lucy's big brother'.

Australopithecus afarensis is usually considered to be a direct ancestor of humans. It is also considered to be a direct ancestor of later species of Australopithecus and all species in the Paranthropus genus.

More information: Smithsonian Institution

The names Praeanthropus africanus and Praeanthropus afarensis have been suggested as alternatives by researchers who believe this species does not belong in the genus Australopithecus.

Fossils show this species was bipedal (able to walk on two legs) but still retained many ape-like features including adaptations for tree climbing, a small brain, and a long jaw.

This species probably used simple tools that may have included sticks and other non-durable plant materials found in the immediate surroundings. 

Stones may also have been used as tools, but there is no evidence that stones were shaped or modified in any way. 


It seems likely that they lived in small social groups containing a mixture of males and females, children and adults. Females were much smaller than males.

This species occupied a range of environments. Some populations lived in savannah or sparse woodland; others lived in denser forests beside lakes. Analysis of their teeth, skull and body shape indicates a diet that consisted mainly of plants. However, fossil animal bones with cut marks found in Dikika in 2010 have been attributed to this species, suggesting they may have included significant amounts of meat in their diets.

Microscopic analysis of their tooth enamel shows that they mostly ate fruits and leaves rather than seeds and other hard plant material. Their cone-shaped rib cage indicates they had large bellies adapted to a relatively low quality and high bulk diet. The position of the sagittal crest toward the back of the skull indicates that the front teeth processed most of the food.

More information: IPHES

If you were to go to the National Museum in Addis Ababa, you would walk into a huge room filled with literally tens of tons of fossils, and most of them would be elephants and rhinos and hippopotamus and monkeys and giraffes and antelopes and so on. Hominids are very rare in the landscape, and it's very rare to find them.

 Donald Johnson