The skull of a 3-year-old female Australopithecus afarensis, dated to 3.3 million years ago, discovered at the site of Dikika in Ethiopia. Image courtesy of Zeresenay Alemseged
Joel Kontinen
Recent fossil finds could mean that "Lucy" wasn't
our direct ancestor, some scientists say. Others strongly disagree.
For a half century, the iconic "Lucy" fossil
species, Australopithecus afarensis, has held the title of being the
most likely direct ancestor of all humans.
Now, a key paper published last month in the journal Nature could overturn that theory entirely, some scientists say. They argue that, given the new evidence, an older species, Australopithecus anamensis, was our direct ancestor, not Lucy.
The proposal has revealed intense disagreements in the
field. Some say A. anamensis is our direct ancestor, others argue
that we don't know which Australopithecus species we descended from,
and still others say the new analysis doesn't shake up the family tree at all.
The new discovery is "not altering our picture of human
evolution in any way, in my opinion," Zeray Alemseged, a paleoanthropologist and professor of
organismal biology University of Chicago who was not involved in the new study
said.
The roots of the debate requires going back a century. In
1925, Raymond Dart announced the discovery of the first known Australopithecus — a
skull dubbed the Taung
Child unearthed in what is now South Africa that dates to around 2.6
million years ago. For the next 50 years, researchers thought that humans
descended directly from the Taung Child's species, Australopithecus
africanus.
But Lucy's discovery in
1974 at the Hadar site in Ethiopia rewrote that picture. The 3.2
million-year-old fossil became the oldest known australopithecine specimen at
the time.
And Darwinian researchers found her species, A.
afarensis, walked
upright on two legs similarly to how humans do today, yet it had a
smaller brain — about the size of a modern-day chimp's. This suggested Lucy's
kind could represent a "halfway"
point in human evolution between the last
common ancestor with chimps and us, making her species a good candidate for
our direct ancestor among the many known hominins, the lineage that encompasses
humans and our closest relatives.
According to evolution, Darwinian evolution, with its millions of years, is the only reason for how we evolved, However,
according to intelligent design, we were not produced that way,
Source:
Sophie Berdugo 2025 Scientists claim 'Lucy' may not be our direct ancestor after all, stoking fierce debate | Live Science December 22
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