If lucy wasn't the missing link then what was she?

Question

i'm stuying lucy and i guess once she was considered the missing link between man and ape. Now there's seems to be evidence that she was just an ape.is that true? i don't know what this evidence is though. did she walk upright? was don johanson wrong about her human-like hips and knees?

Answer 1

I suppose the real issue here is the term missing link. This is a misnomer, which implies that there was and ape one day and a human the next. This is contrary to what we know about evolution and is a product of ignorance of the evolutionary process.

  In fact as another poster has established Lucy shared some features generally associated with humans and others associated with apes, or more accurately even earlier human ancestors. There will be no definitive missing link Ever. Instead what we can expect is a series of snap shots into the evolutionary process. Imagine a caterpillar and a butterfly. Say you got to take ten or fifteen pictures of the process at random times. Where is the missing link between caterpillar and butterfly?

  Also remember humans did not evolve from apes, but rather apes and humans share a common ancestor.

Answer 2

It was decided when she was found that she walked upright.  I really can't believe the scientists made such a monumental mistake and changed their minds.  Where did you hear that?  The only thing that has changed is that other skeletons have been found that indicate nature tried many more times than was previously known to create a human.  They were all dead ends except for Neanderthal which developed into us.

Answer 3

She dated the missing link before he went to work at the wwf.

Answer 4

just an extinct ape

Answer 5

Yes she walked upright. Johanson (who DID discover her) wasn't wrong about hips and knees. There is no single missing link, just a lot of pieces to the puzzle - what has changed is simply that more fossils have been found, which make the story more complex - which Johanson fully expected to happen. This web site http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn...

will give you a lot of information on Lucy quickly

Answer 6

Lucy (also given a second (Amharic) name: dinqineš, or “Dinkenesh,” meaning “You are beautiful” or "you are wonderful"[2]) is the common name of AL 288-1, the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered on November 24, 1974 by the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE; director: Maurice Taieb, co-directors: Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens) in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago.

Postcranial

One of the most striking characteristics possessed by Lucy was a valgus knee, which indicated that she normally moved by walking upright. Her femoral head was small and her femoral neck was short, both primitive characteristics. Her greater trochanter, however, was clearly derived, being short and human like rather than taller than the femoral head. The length ratio of her humerus to femur was 84.6% compared to 71.8% for modern humans and 97.8% for common chimpanzees, indicating that either the arms of A. afarensis were beginning to shorten, the legs were beginning to lengthen, or that both were occurring simultaneously. Lucy also possessed a lumbar curve, another indicator of habitual bipedalism.

Johanson was able to recover Lucy's left innominate bone and sacrum. Though the sacrum was remarkably well preserved, the innominate was distorted, leading to two different reconstructions. The first reconstruction had little iliac flare and virtually no anterior wrap, creating an ilium that greatly resembled that of an ape. However, this reconstruction proved to be faulty, as the superior pubic rami would not have been able to connect if the right ilium was identical to the left. A later reconstruction by Tim White showed a broad iliac flare and a definite anterior wrap, indicating that Lucy had an unusually broad inner acetabular distance and unusually long superior pubic rami. Her pubic arch was over 90 degrees, similar to modern human females. Her acetabulum, however, was small and primitive, like that of a chimpanzee.

The cranial evidence recovered from Lucy are far less derived than her postcranium. Her neurocranium is small and primitive, while she possesses more spatulate canines than apes.

This[specify] was due to the earlier belief (1950-1970's) that increasing brain size of apes was the trigger for evolving towards humans. Before Lucy, a fossil called '1470' (Homo rudolfensis) with a brain capacity of about 800 cubic centimetres had been discovered, an ape with a bigger brain. If the older theory was correct, humans most likely evolved from the latter. However, it turned out Lucy was the older fossil, yet Lucy was bipedal (walked upright) and had a brain of only around 375 to 500 cc. These facts provided a basis to challenge the older views.

Bottomline: Lucy is an early hominid skeleton, and not an ape.

Answer 7

she is human i think

Answer 8

Who is Don Johanson? Louis Leakey and his wife discovered Lucy. If you buried your skeleton in mud for a few million years it might be tough to decide what you are too, but Lucy was found near stone tools which is why she is not an 'ape'