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Dr. Donald Johanson, Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, found the ancient hominid, "Lucy," in 1974. Here speaks about the significance of the Orrorin find.
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August 2001, Arizona
In the search for our earliest ancestors, perhaps the most famous discovery of all time has been Lucy, a partial skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974. Her co-discoverer, Donald Johanson, went on to be one of the world's most celebrated paleontologists.
We visit Donald at the Institute of Human Origins, the laboratory which he founded at Arizona State University. Our executive producer has flown in from Washington and is intrigued to hear Donald's thoughts on Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut's find. Just a few weeks before he was the first paleontologist to see the collection of fossils known as Orrorin.
First we hear about Lucy and how it feels to make a discovery that rocks the world. Donald was just over 30 years old when he found Lucy, named for a Beatles song that was playing at the time. "Lucy" gave us critical information about early humans in Africa just over 3 million years ago.
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"Lucy's" hipbone, tailbone, and femur.
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More than 25 years later, Lucy has come under close scrutiny once more. Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut now claim that Lucy is not our direct ancestor. Could this be the end of the line for the most famous skeleton on earth?
Surrounded by fossils, Donald talks these claims through with the keen insights and open mind of an experienced scientist. He is intrigued about what the fossils could mean for the human evolutionary tree, even if it means his own find, Lucy, may no longer be our direct ancestor.
But it is the beginning of the human evolutionary tree that has brought us to Arizona. When did we become human? Was there a point when we were both chimp-like and human-like? How could Orrorin fit in to the evolutionary tree?
Donald was one of the first scientists to congratulate Martin and Brigitte on their find. Now, having seen the fossils for himself, he looks forward to further research on the bones and is excited by the possibility that Orrorin could be amongst our earliest ancestors.
- Lucy McDowell
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