Lucy Essay Essay

We all realize that us human beings consume some sort of relation to apes and chimpanzees, barely what evolved us from them to becoming biped hominids? In this essay I will be inculcating you about the ontogeny of humans, the captivating disco rattling of Lucy, an Australopithecus a distantensis, and how her uncovering of a unseasoned species is so all-important(prenominal) to our advancement. Lucy is our oldest, most complete human antecedent and it lead to a controversial change in our view of human origins.Lucy is a 3. 15 jillion year old female hominid, of the genus Australopithecus, whose systema skeletale was uncovered on November 24, 1974 by Donald C. Johanson and Tom Gray in the Hadar function of Ethiopia. Donald Johansons first denudation consisted of a few pieces of a knee joint b adept. He sent the bones to Owen Lovejoy, who was an anatomist and part-time forensic expert. He thence examined the bone fragments and concluded that they appeared human, that the jo int could lock, which meant the animal could walk upright. This was an important stripping showing an ancient bipedal creature.They named their discovery, Lucy in reference to the cognize Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which played over and over as they celebrated their findings. plot of ground only 40% of the skeleton was found, this uncovering of Lucy was very fascinating and answered many questions to our human evolution because it was the missing link between apes and the upbringing of hominids. The discoverers called Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis which stands for southern ape of the Afar region. This genus was one of the earliest species of hominids the family of bipedal primates also involves homo hablis and homo erectus.While Australopithecus and Homo species vary in many ways, both hominids appropriate common characteristics that define them as a group. The most distinct of these traits is bipedal locomotion, which means they could walk upright instead on being on all 4s like apes. The particular and revolutionary characteristics of Lucy is that she had a small skull, a bipedal knee structure, molars, and front teeth of human form and coat. Lucys skeleton proves that her kind was bipedal by the shape of her pelvis and the shift the femur takes from the hip socket to the knee joint.From her waist down she was hominid, and from her waist up she was still ape, as her skull was still the size of a chimpanzee. Her brain size varies in range from 365 to 385 cubic centimeters and had hand and push back cortex. Her species has a lengthy mouth, strong brow line, and a small forehead. She stood about three and a half feet towering and weighed 60-65 pounds. The males were about twice the females size ranging from four to four and a half feet tall. This species also had about 100-120 different calls, hand gestures and signals.This suggests a intricate social and mating system. Evidence shows that she was probably young but fully mature w hen she died of natural causes. Her corpse is likely known to maintain sunk into a lake and over millions of years, the lake dried up, buried, and harden her bones which lastly fossilized them and preserved them for us to discover. The following year, again at the celebrated site of Hadar, Ethiopia, Donald Johansons team make the ground breaking discovery of the fossilized remains of some 13 individuals, known as the eldest Family.They believed that at that time, there was a mud slide that buried and killed slews of these creatures, in all age range, from babies to adults, both male and females. This was believed to be the oldest indorse of human ancestors living in groups. It had also provided us with much to a greater extent understanding of their lifestyle and habitat. Lucy lived at a time when the Hadar region was non a desert environment like it is today. Instead, it was thought to be much like a woodlands and savannah domain.A. farensis, was not totally ape and except not quite human, is thought to have probably lived in a variety of habitats. Having evolved into being bipedal as an adaptation to living in the open areas, like grasslands with few trees. They were thought to feed for seeds, berries, fruit, tubers, nuts and termites. The improvement of being equal to(p) to walk upright gave them the advantage of free manpower to grab food or carry their young, looking over high grassland, and developing a bigger brain. Unfortunately for them, they had long dry seasons with no rain which made the food source scarce.Without bipedalism we wouldnt be able to develop into the hominids that we have become. The Hardy Weinbergs equation is important for the thought of commonwealth ancestrals. In order for Hardy-Weinbergs equilibrium of no evolution go onring to work, the following seven conditions must be met no mutations must occur so that new alleles do not enter, no gene turn tail basin occur, random mating must occur, everyone produces the sam e number of offspring, the population must be large so that there is no genetic drift, natural selection is not occurring, and all members are breeding in the population.This equation does not work with humans because we do not arbitrarily mate. Usually individuals choose a spouse who has positive attributes that they like, which can include personality, taste, attractive, good with children, intelligence, sometimes race/color, height, humor, etc. In Lucy terms they would requisite someone who is a good hunter, provider, and smart but they wouldnt draw that option of being picky because they couldnt travel very far to selection their peculiar mate.Also, natural selection happens all the time as well as mutations but most are not harmful. So if you were to apply this to the A. afarensis, the majority would disprove this equation. A. afarensis were also good at cats-paw making. They used horns and bones as tools but not as weapons, as many people though they did. Also, they would use some stone tools that were known to be the breaking dawn to human technology. Their main predators were big cats much(prenominal) as lions and leopards. They had little to no protection which made them easy prey.Leopards were nice climbers but they could not climb as well as apes which made it hard to escape. Also the lions are very patient creatures, so they would gestate under the tree until they would could down and then they would eat them. Eventually, the robust A. afarensis, a. boisei, a. robustus and a. aeithiopicus would go extinct but the gracile Homo Habilis, which was discovered 2. 6 million years ago by Lewis Leaky, would go on to become our ancestors. In Africa, some of the animals that relied on forest died out because it was too dry.For example, during this period Lucy had disappeared because this species patois survive in that situation. But other species evolved by exploring different dietetic sources that were available in that time. For example, many evol ved physical adaptations to graze on the new species of plant life called grass that colonized the deforested terrain. The same seems to have happened to our ancestors, who had antecedently relied on forest foods such as soft fruit. We just unploughed evolving as the millions of years went by and adapting to new environments.In this essay, as you can see, Lucy was an astonishing discovery and was the missing link to our upbringing. This species was bipedal and hominid from the intemperance down, ape like from the waist up. They were also smarter than chimps with their different hand and motor cortex, their tool use, and brain size. Without the constant concept and knowledge of evolution occurring, our species would have never of came about but we are very fortunate for this discovery and to be who we are in this world today.