Lucy (fossil)

For more than three million years, I slept soundly beneath the warm, dry earth. My world was quiet, a deep and dreamless rest. Before my long sleep, my home was a place of wide-open plains and shady forests in a land we now call Ethiopia. The sun was warm on my skin, and the air hummed with the sounds of ancient creatures. I wasn't quite like you. My arms were a little longer, perfect for swinging in trees, and my brain was much smaller. But I had a secret in the way I moved. My hips and my knees were special, and they held a clue to a very big story about where you came from. Can you imagine a world so long ago, a world where the first steps towards humanity were just being taken? That was my world, and I was waiting patiently in the ground for someone to find me and let me tell my tale.

My long, quiet rest ended on a bright, sunny day. The date was November 24th, 1974. A man named Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist—that's a scientist who studies ancient human ancestors—was walking through the dusty landscape of Hadar, Ethiopia, with his student, Tom Gray. Suddenly, Donald spotted a tiny piece of bone sticking out of a hillside. It was part of an arm. Then he saw another bone, and another. They were my bones. For the first time in 3.2 million years, sunlight touched me again. The entire camp of scientists was buzzing with excitement. They knew they had found something incredibly special. That night, they celebrated at their camp, and a song by a famous band called The Beatles played over and over again on their tape player. The song was 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.' In that moment, surrounded by happy scientists under a sky full of stars, I was given my new name. Hello, my name is Lucy.

Once I was carefully brought to a laboratory, scientists began to piece my story together. They gave me a scientific name, Australopithecus afarensis, which is a very fancy way of saying I am a 'southern ape from the Afar region.' By studying me, they learned I was a young adult when I died, and I was quite small, only about three and a half feet tall. But the most amazing discovery came from my bones. My hip bone was short and wide, and the angle of my knee was just right. What did that mean? It meant I walked upright on two legs. I was bipedal. This was a huge shock to everyone. Before they found me, most scientists believed that our ancestors developed big, clever brains first, and only then did they start walking on two feet. But I proved them wrong. My small skull and my upright body showed that walking on two legs came millions of years before big brains. I completely changed the story of human evolution.

In my home of Ethiopia, I have another name, a beautiful one. They call me Dinkinesh, which means 'you are marvelous' in the Amharic language. I think that name fits perfectly, because my story is a marvelous one. Think of the history of all humans as a giant, complicated jigsaw puzzle. For a long time, there was a huge empty space in the puzzle. When they found me, I became a key piece that helped connect other pieces together. I am not the very first ancestor, nor the last, but I am an important link in the incredible chain that connects the ancient past to you, right now. My story reminds everyone that we all share a long, amazing history. So, the next time you look at your own two feet, remember me, Dinkinesh, and stay curious about the fantastic puzzle of our shared past.