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IAN TATTERSALL (CURATOR EMERITUS, DIVISION OF ANTHROPOLOGY): When Lucy was discovered back in 1974, she was by far the most complete as well as the most ancient human precursor that was known in the fossil record. Lucy was really an entirely new window into the more ancient past than had been known previously. 

ASHLEY HAMMOND (ASSISTANT CURATOR, DIVISION OF ANTHROPOLOGY): Everyone's heard of Lucy. Lucy is a household name at this point. And while many of us know her as Lucy, in Ethiopia they know her as Dinknesh, which means “you are marvelous” in Amharic, which is one of the major languages in Ethiopia.

ROB DESALLE (CURATOR AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, INSTITUTE FOR COMPARATIVE GENOMICS): Lucy's cool. And Lucy has also has become a linchpin, a major player, in how we interpret evolution of our lineage. 

TATTERSALL: So the picture we have today of human evolution is very, very different from the picture that we had when Lucy was discovered. It's been 50 years now. And a lot has changed in that time.

And it would be hubris to assume that in 50 year’s time, things won't have changed at least as much as they have since we discovered Lucy.

Lucy is a name that we informally give to a very well-preserved skeleton of a very ancient human precursor who lived and died in Ethiopia at about 3.2 million years ago. 

HAMMOND: Here at the Museum, we’re lucky enough to have a cast of Lucy on display in the Hall of Human Origins. 

Lucy is from a species called Australopithecus afarensis. This is a species really well known throughout Eastern Africa. At least from Tanzania up through Ethiopia.  

Australopithecus, the genus, precedes our own genus, genus Homo. So there's an assumption that genus Australopithecus probably evolved into genus Homo at some point, but we don't know for sure.

Lucy was 40% complete, she had elements from all different regions of her body.  

We didn't really know what Australopithecus looked like below the neck. And Lucy changed that.  

Lucy had a knee that was positioned under the midline of her body. So that's a really important feature for being an efficient biped.  

And she has really told us a lot about the origins of bipedality, upright walking. 

Lucy is only about three and a half feet tall fully grown, and that's about the size of your average kindergartener.

Lucy's species had a fairly small brain size, so the size of a large orange, more or less, which is what we see in chimpanzees. But she was already bipedal. So Lucy’s species showed us that big brains came much later in human evolution.

Lucy's pelvis and hip bones have been really influential for my work. The first time that I studied Lucy's bones,  it was really an incredible moment in my career as a paleoanthropologist. Because it's almost like meeting a rock star. Lucy is an icon. 

TATTERSALL: It's a very powerful experience and a great privilege to be able to actually handle and — and study these unique specimens.

And Lucy, for example, lives in a vault in the National Museum in Addis Ababa, the capital of of Ethiopia. She's part of the world patrimony, but…she also belongs to the Ethiopian people.   

And they have to take good care of her security. So she's in a vault where she can be studied by scientists.  

To be able to present fossils to a world audience, casts are absolutely vital. 

A cast is an exact replica of a fossil of any kind.  

For all intents and purposes, you are looking at the original when you're looking at a cast in a museum exhibit. And you're seeing it in three dimensions. And you cannot get quite the same impact from even a very wonderful photograph.

And it was obviously very important for us to have Lucy represented in our exhibit on — on human evolution.  

It also was very important to have a chance to look at it in three dimensions ourselves as scientists in the laboratories of the museum. 

HAMMOND: Technology has really come a long way in this field since 1974. The possibilities for how we can analyze fossils like Lucy have really exploded with the advent of things like micro CT scanning, isotopic analyses, and ancient DNA.

DESALLE: DNA carries the information for us to reconstruct the history of how organisms have diverged.

We have just recently within the last 10 years started to get DNA sequences from extinct hominids, that is the Neanderthal and the Denisovans. And these DNA sequences are really helpful in — in getting us to understand how our species, Sapiens, diverged from the other hominid species. And from other great apes.

When Lucy was found, what, 50 years ago, the technology was nowhere near what it is now. 

The real limitation is whether or not you can find fossils with DNA in them. 

Fossils like Lucy are heavily mineralized, which means that all of the organic material like DNA has been replaced with minerals.  

Fossils that are older than, say, 100,000 years, certainly older than half a million or a million years, are going to carry very little, if any DNA. So this restricts us from getting the genomes of really old fossils like Lucy, who's three million years old

The kinds of techniques that could open new doors in the study of human evolution don't involve using DNA. They involve using proteins that the DNA codes for. And it's been shown recently that proteins actually stick around in fossils a lot longer than DNA does. So that — proteins may be a lot easier to work with from fossil remains than, say, DNA. 

HAMMOND: I think one of Lucy's biggest contributions has been not just to science, but to public understanding of human evolution. Lucy became a household name after her discovery. And she continues to just live in the imaginations of people when they come to the museum and see her on exhibit.  

TATTERSALL: What has really been wonderful is the sort of serendipity with which new discoveries in paleoanthropology have been made. And I think what's the most exciting thing as we contemplate the future is the element of surprise. And I'm looking forward to that.