Was the famed Lucy formerly thought to be the oldest human remains or the 'missing link'?

Question

Was the famed Lucy formerly thought to be the oldest human remains or the 'missing link'?

Answer 1

Lucy is not the missing link, but a branch on the human evolution tree. She walked upright, but really was more chimp like than human. Modern man as we see ourselves today is a very young species. unfortunately there are huge gaps in the line of our evolution, but new info is always being found. I mean for decades scientists though that Neandetthal man was one of our ancestors, now thanks to new technology we are discovering that neanderthal might have been a cousin to ourselves.

Answer 2

She is NOT a missing link.

However she is not human either. She is classified as Australopithecus afarensis, her craniometry is not identical to any present day human.

She was formerly thought to be the missing link.

Answer 3

She was the oldest suspected human ancestor when she was found.   Leaky didn't find Lucy.  It was found by Dr. Donald (I think that was his first name) Johanson.  She was very similar to a chimp but walked on two legs like us.  In fact they have found other species which indicate that Australopithecus Afarenses may not be in our ancestry.  Lucy is probaby closely related to the human chimp common ancestor in my opinion.  Who is to say she is intermediate between a chimp and a human.  She may in fact be intermediate between the chimp human ancestor and a chimp.  The truth is that there is far more we don't know that what we know.

Answer 4

"Lucy", formally know as AL288-1, (cataloged as: "Afar location, find #288-1") is the remains of  an Australopithecus afarenis. ("Southern ape of Afar") She was found in 1974. Don Johanson's team found the remains. Her name came from the fact that the song "Lucy in the Sky" was playing the evening that the team brought the remains in. Lucy was found in the Afar triangle of Ethiopia, near the town of Hadar. She is considered the most complete skeleton found from that time.

By the way, it's interesting how the claim of "most complete" was made.

There are 206 bones in the hominid body. If you count the paired bones (two arms, two legs, etc.) as one, then you have the 120 bones of a "half skeleton." Lucy is described as 20 percent of a whole or 28 percent of a half skeleton. Alan Walker found Nariokome Boy a Homo erectus skeleton. This had 67 bones, 33 percent of a whole and 40 percent of a half skeleton. curious, Walker asked Don Johanson, Lucy's discoverer, how he arrived at her percentages. Johanson stated he had discounted the 106 bones of the hands and feet (they are only rarely found) this gave the percentages that are quoted. By that computation, Nariokome Boy is 66 percent complete.

Lucy stood some 3.5 feet tall and lived 3.0 to 3.5 million years ago. She is the most complete skeleton found from that period. Brain capacity, a suggestive means of determining intelligence, is thought to have been 410cc. The modern human brain averages 1400 cc. The species is thought to have gone extinct some 2.5 million years ago.

What makes Lucy important is that her ability to walk on two feet rather then on four feet or having to use a "knuckle walk." The term for walking on two feet is bipedalisim, and Lucy's remains showed that it was well established. Due to the completeness of the remains, Lucy's overall body proportions could be established. This gave critical information about what the hominids looked like and how early they had adopted walking on two feet. Lucy walked slightly bowlegged and based on the curved toes and pelvis shape, appear to still be spending time in trees. The shape of the pelvis appeared to show that her young would have had an easier time being born. They didn't have to turn and twist as do human children today do.

The term "Australopithecus" means "southern ape." The genus includes, afarenis, boisei, robustus and Prometheus

Answer 5

oldest remains

Answer 6

Lucy was the accepted "missing link" for many years until her discoverer, Dr. louis Leakey (sp?) was accused of falsifying information.  This cast a shadow on all his work.

Answer 7

Not any more. A near relative of hers, found near her in the Olduvai Gorge was just dated at 4.5 million years old. An almost complete skull was found, enough to show he walked upright and carried him self erect.

       It's not known if this is a separate line yet though on human history.

Answer 8

Wow.  Lemme remember.

Lucy is a hominid.  Her legs place her about halfway between chimpanzees and more modern species of humans.

So, she might be considered either by us lay people.  The professionals place her in a nitch all by herself, and don't really seem to label her either way.

Answer 9

Yes lucy is the oldest human remains. oldest, best preserved skeleton of any erect-walking human.

Discovered in  1974 in a remote region of Ethiopia by  Donald Johanson

Answer 10

Lucy was not a human, she was an Australopithecine and she was not found by Dr. Johanson as he likes to go around perpetuating, she was found by his grad student.  

At first it was thought that Lucy was the "missing link", but that was later disproved.  At the time she was found, she was the oldest hominoid type, but since then an older hominoid type has been found called Sahelenthropus chadensis, which is much closer to what the famed "missing link" is proposed to look like.

So the answer to your question is yes, she was once thought to be both but that has since been disproved with more research and discoveries.