The Australopithecines

Australopithecus afarensis

        The species that is a direct descendant of Australopithecus anamensis is Australopithecus afarensis which lived around 3.6 to 3.0 mya. This species was first discovered and determined to be Australopithecus in the 1970s. There have been many fossils found of this species but the most complete and most well-known of them all was named Lucy. According to Clark Spencer Larsen, "Lucy stood only a little more than 1 m (about 3.5 ft) and had somewhat short legs relative to the length of the arms and body trunk." (280) He further goes on to state that Lucy's legs were not short due to limited bipedalism, she in fact was just short. Looking at the bones of a male specimen it was determined that the skeleton was very human-like there were not many changes that had to happen to become the skeleton that makes up modern humans. The shoulder joint that was found as part of Lucy's skeleton has led scientists to believe that this species spent the majority of its time roaming the ground as bipeds. Bipedal does not translate to having no ape-like features though, this species had characteristics like small brain size and a face that protruded below the nose that were ape-like. A skull found that was nearly whole serves as proof that this species likely had no ability for speech due to an ape-like hyoid bone.