Modern Era · Africa · Science

1974

Lucy discovered in Ethiopia

1974

In the Afar triangle, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson found a forty percent complete skeleton of an early hominid 3.2 million years old. He named her Lucy after the Beatles song playing at camp. The fossil showed that upright walking had come before big brains. Human origins had grown a new branch.

In context
Also in 1974 (5 other events on record)
Era

Modern Era (1901–2000), one of 590 events from that era on Saeculum.