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News Release 10-105
Researchers Discover Relative of Best-Known Human Ancestor
Famed hominid "Lucy" no longer alone
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![Photo a small fragment of the lower arm bone of A. afarensis.](/news/mmg/media/images/kadanuumuu1_f.jpg)
Researchers recovered only the second partial skeleton of science's best-known early human ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis. It's 400,000 years older than the famed hominid "Lucy," which is the same species, and it's male. Here, a small fragment of the specimen's lower arm bone is shown.
Credit: Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
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Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Curator and Head of Physical Anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, discusses the discovery and significance of "Kadanuumuu."
Credit: Cleveland Museum of Natural History
![Photo of Yohannes Haile-Selassie excavating an A. afarensis rib from the Korsi Dora locality.](/news/mmg/media/images/kadanuumuu3_f.jpg)
Excavations between 2005 and 2008 in the Korsi Dora locality of the Woranso-Mille Project in Ethiopia uncovered an upper arm, a collarbone, neck bones, ribs, pelvis, sacrum, a thighbone, a shinbone and an adult shoulder blade. Excavations took more than five years to complete.
Credit: Woranso-Mille Project
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![Photo showing the reconstructed skeleton of the Australopithecus afarensis Lucy.](/news/mmg/media/images/kadanuumuu4_f.jpg)
The Australopithecus afarensis Lucy, whose partial skeleton is seen here, is thought to be ancestral to the genus Australopithecus and the genus Homo that includes modern humans.
Credit: Cleveland Museum of Natural History
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University of California, Berkley paleontologist Tim White discusses the importance of "Lucy" in a NSF special report titled Evolution of Evolution - 150 Years of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." His is one of three interviews in the report discussing anthropologic evolution.
Credit: National Science Foundation