Anthropology.net

Again, from Afarensis (he is on fire this week), there is outstanding news that beginning in September 2007, Lucy will enjoy top billing among 200 other Ethiopian exhibits that will tour museums in 10 US cities for four years.

If you don’t know about Lucy, she is an australopithecine found by paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray in 1974. They found her sweet fossil in Ethiopia’s northern Afar region, near where Dikika was recently found. She was named after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

The lucky people of Houston will get to see Lucy for the first time (although she once came to the U.S. for the analysis) at the premiere exhibition hosted by the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. This was all announced by Ethiopian officials, like Gezahgen Kebede, Ethiopia’s honorary consul in Houston in the US state of Texas. He remarked,

“Lucy has been in Ethiopia over the last 30 years… It is time for us to share her with the whole world because she is [part of] the origin of mankind.”

The intentions of this is not primarily aimed to promote an better understanding of human evolution, but rather alter the image of the Horn of Africa nation, which is perhaps better known to the outside world for famine, floods and other human suffering than science.

All that aside, I hope some more announcements of rest of her tour come out. I’d like to see her remains in real life, I’ve seen nothing but casts. This all comes from this source article, “Famed Hominid ‘Lucy’ to Leave Ethiopia for First Exhibit Abroad.”