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CNN: How did the fossil get the name Lucy?
Johanson: Because of the delicate nature of the bones and the short stature, we felt she was probably a female.
(Subsequent fossil discoveries revealed that males were much bigger than females.)
That night in camp, we were playing the Beatles’ (album).
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” were playing when one of the camp members said, “Why don’t you call her Lucy?”
It was just serendipity that it happened, but it stuck. It was, in many ways, an attractive name.
People could identify with it. It made those bones a person. It drew you in and made you want to know more.
And she’s been the touchstone (of human origins) for the average person.
CNN: What was Lucy’s significance at the time that she was discovered?
Johanson: She was the oldest, most complete hominin known at that time.
This was terra incognita in the early ‘70s. Very few people had been to this region of Ethiopia, and people began launching their own expeditions and finding even more exciting things in some ways.
But I think that Lucy was the spark. She ignited a new stage in human origins research.
What she did, most importantly, was she broke the 3 million-year time barrier.
The site of Hadar, which is a local name, is very fossil-rich.
And it turned out to produce an enormous number of fossils of her species and gave us a really important benchmark by which all other discoveries that were made in the Afar could be judged.