Editor's note: This is part of a special package written for the 50th anniversary of the discovery of a 3.2 million-year-old A. afarensis fossil (AL 288-1), nicknamed "Lucy."
Our ancestor "Lucy," a young adult Australopithecus afarensis, became world-famous half a century ago after Donald Johanson and colleagues discovered her remarkably complete skeleton in Ethiopia. Today, Lucy is an important touchstone in human evolution because she lived 3.2 million years ago, evolutionarily halfway between our ape ancestors and us.
