Hadar
Exciting New Discoveries
Donald Johanson was an anthropologist in 1974. An anthropologist is a scientist that studies lives of human beings. Hadar is a place that is located in Great Rift Valley in Africa. Before long ago, Hadar was a forest and grasslands that had lakes. That year, Johanson and his team were working in under the hot sun, when Johanson was digging, he found bones of an early ancestor.
Putting Together the Pieces
Johanson and his colleague, Tom Gray, dug the bones carefully. A colleague is a coworker. When they had done digging, they had collected 46 parts of bones of one skeleton. When all the parts of bone were reassembled, he realized that he had found 40% of a skeleton, a small type of Australopithecus. The bones of the skeleton, which Johanson found, was the most complete skeleton of Australopithecus ever found. With all the parts and sizes that he found, he knew that he found a female one. So he named her Lucy, but her scientific name is Australopithecus afarensis.
Walking on Two Feet
After the scientist tested Lucy, they discovered that she lived in between 3.2 and 3.8 million years ago. This is the oldest ancestor that was discovered. Older than the Nutcracker Man. Johanson discovered another important thing, Lucy had walked like a normal human, with both feet, scientists call it bipedalism.
The Importance of Bipedalism
Bipedalism is so important because walking upright on both their feet, is a considered one of the basic traits of human beings. Trait means is a quality that makes something what it is. Anthropologists never found tools old enough like Lucy, so now scientists think that the earliest ancestors walked upright with both feet before they use any tools or could speak, or as Johanson says, the discovery of Lucy proved that walking upright with both feet was the first human trait.
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