Lucy Monthly Lecture Series—Yohannes Haile Selassie PhD

Join ASU Institute of Human Origins researchers in 2024 for a year-long “master class” in human origins research as they illuminate the many facets of how we “became human” and what that means for the future of humans on the planet.

Yohannes Haile-Selassie PhD—Standing on the shoulders of Lucy: New discoveries usher in IHO's exciting new future

Lucy, the iconic 3.2-million-year-old partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis, and one of our earliest human ancestors, has long been central to our understanding of the evolutionary lineage leading to all hominin species, including our own species Homo sapiens. However, the research sparked by her discovery has uncovered additional ancestral species, some of which are twice as old as Lucy, while others lived alongside her. What are these other contemporaneous species, and how do they affect our understanding of Lucy's place in human evolution? This talk explores these questions.