Lucy, the most famous fossil of a human ancestor, probably died after falling from a tree, according to a study appearing in Nature led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. Lucy, a 3.18-million-year-old specimen¹ of Australopithecus afarensis -- or "southern ape of Afar" -- is among the oldest, most complete skeletons of any adult, erect-walking human ancestor. Since her discovery in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 1974 by Arizona State University anthropologist² Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray, Lucy -- a terrestrial biped -- has been at the center of a vigorous debate about whether this ancient species also spent time in the trees.

 

"It is ironic³ that the fossil at the center of a debate about the role of arborealism in human evolution likely died from injuries suffered from a fall out of a tree," said lead author John Kappelman, a UT Austin anthropology⁴ and geological sciences professor.

 

Kappelman first studied Lucy during her U.S. museum tour in 2008, when the fossil detoured⁵ to the High-Resolution X-ray Computed⁶ Tomography Facility (UTCT) in the UT Jackson School of Geosciences -- a machine designed to scan through materials as solid as a rock and at a higher resolution than medical CT. For 10 days, Kappelman and geological sciences professor Richard Ketcham carefully scanned all of her 40-percent-complete skeleton to create a digital archive of more than 35,000 CT slices.

 

"Lucy is precious. There's only one Lucy, and you want to study her as much as possible," Ketcham said. "CT is nondestructive. So you can see what is inside, the internal details and arrangement of the internal bones."

 

Studying Lucy and her scans, Kappelman noticed something unusual: The end of the right humerus was fractured in a manner not normally seen in fossils, preserving a series of sharp, clean breaks with tiny bone fragments and slivers⁷ still in place.

 

"This compressive fracture results when the hand hits the ground during a fall, impacting the elements of the shoulder against one another to create a unique signature on the humerus," said Kappelman, who consulted Dr. Stephen Pearce, an orthopedic surgeon at Austin Bone and Joint⁸ Clinic, using a modern human-scale, 3-D printed model of Lucy.

 

Pearce confirmed: The injury was consistent with a four-part proximal humerus fracture, caused by a fall from considerable height when the conscious victim stretched out an arm in an attempt to break the fall.

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