How Did 3.2 Million year Old Lucy Die - 2019
On a recent trip to Houston I was meeting with friend, scholar, and curator Dirk Van Tuerenhout of the Houston Museum of Natural Science and we were recalling the crazy time in 2007 when the museum was mounting Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia. This exhibition was unique in that it was planned to include literally all the greatest treasures both art and archaeological from Ethiopia. Sometimes politics can be daunting and in this case that was an understatement as Ethiopia refused to send almost 200 promised art objects with less than six months to go before opening. Dirk, Lisa Rebori, the Collections Manager, and I decided to try to replace the pieces. I got in the car and started at the Harn Museum in Florida and worked my way up the coast to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts replacing all the objects. And I thought we were done except for the huge accolades and standing ovations. Nope not even close. The entire show had to be appraised along with one special little object named Lucy. To say the challenge was daunting is a bit of an understatement.. considering I had never appraised a fossil. But I do know something about appraising and after calling literally all over the world for about ten days, I found the path home and my comparable named Sue a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I won’t tell you what the appraised value was but I will say that Sue fully installed at the Field Museum was $15 million. Which brings us back to Dirk and our conversation. I recalled Sue was going to Austin for extensive examination and testing. I asked what came of it and Dirk referenced an article By Evan Andrews from the History Channel that I thought made a perfect segment for a Christmas newsletter.. How did Lucy die?
The discovery of Lucy’s partial skeleton represented a major breakthrough in the study of ancient human ancestors, enabling scientists to establish that early hominids like Australopithecus afarensis learned to walk upright before their brains grew larger. Though Lucy’s feet, knees and hips resembled those of modern humans, she had a small head, with a brain similar in size to that of a chimpanzee. Also like chimps, early hominids matured at an earlier age than modern humans: Lucy’s skeleton and teeth show that she had reached maturity even though she was only around 15 or 16 years old when she died. She measured 3 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 60 pounds.
The new study, published this week in the journal Nature, originated in the mid-2000s, when Lucy’s skeleton was on temporary loan from the National Museum of Ethiopia for a traveling exhibition in the United States. After a show at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin spent 10 days examining the famous fossil—which includes bones from the skull, upper limb, hand, axial skeleton, pelvis, lower limb and foot—using high-resolution, high-energy Computed Tomography (CT) scanning equipment.
According to John Kappelman, a professor of anthropology at UT Austin who is the lead author of the new study, analysis of the scans revealed puzzling fractures in the upper arm and shoulders, with no signs of healing—indicating that the injuries may have occurred around the time of Lucy’s death. Kappelman and his colleagues consulted with orthopedic surgeons, who confirmed that the break in Lucy’s upper right arm appeared to be a compressive fracture, which can occur when someone falls from a great height.
With this in mind, the researchers inspected the rest of Lucy’s skeleton—including virtual 3D models they made from the scans as well as the original bones in Ethiopia—looking for other fractures that could have been caused by a fall. Though they found numerous breaks that likely occurred after she died (as the bones aged and were buried by sand), they also found more compression fractures and other breaks that appear to have been caused by a fall.
In the new study’s version of events, Lucy died quickly but not painlessly. The researchers believe she fell from a height of some 40 feet, hitting the ground at a speed of more than 35 mph. Because the area in which Lucy’s skeleton was found was low-lying, with no cliffs nearby, they believe she must have fallen from a tree. From the pattern of breaks in Lucy’s ankles, knees, hips and shoulders, the scientists hypothesized that she hit the ground feet first. Both of her shoulders were fractured in a way that suggests she stretched out her arms to break her fall, indicating she was conscious at the time of her death. But, the study’s authors concluded, “death followed swiftly” after the fall, as she likely suffered extensive injuries to her internal organs in addition to the broken bones.
“By understanding her death is how [Lucy] came alive to me,” Kappelman told USA Today. “Lucy was no longer simply a box of bones but in death became a real individual: a small, broken body lying helpless at the bottom of a tree.” He and his colleagues also explored alternate hypotheses about Lucy’s cause of death, including a flood, a seizure, a lightning strike or attack by an animal, but none matched with the pattern of fractures they found.
A full-scale replica of Lucy's skull (Credit: Craig Hartley/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A full-scale replica of Lucy’s skull. (Credit: Craig Hartley/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The new study supports the much-debated theory known as “arborealism,” according to which human ancestors lived partially in trees and partially on land. Given her small size, Lucy would have had to deal with predators like hyenas, saber-tooth cats and jackals, and the scientists believe she and her fellow early hominids took to the trees to protect themselves.
Other experts, however, say that the new study’s authors didn’t do enough to rule out other causes for the fractures in Lucy’s bones. These critics include the paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson, who led the team that discovered Lucy’s skeleton in 1974. Johanson told the New York Times that the fractures were far more likely to have occurred long after Lucy’s death, as her bones were exposed to the elements and buried by sand. By the time Lucy lived, he contends, human ancestors were no longer skilled tree climbers, but had evolved to find their food on the ground. “Australopithecus afarensis was essentially a terrestrial animal,” Johanson said.
Despite such criticism, there’s no denying the intrigue surrounding a possible solution to such a famous cold case after more than 3 million years. Fortunately, armchair anthropologists will soon be able to judge for themselves, as the Ethiopian government has allowed Kappelman and his colleagues to publish their data online at eLucy.org.
https://www.history.com/news/did-lucy-famed-human-ancestor-die-after-falling-from-a-tree
