Australopithecus afarensis

Australopithecus afarensis is an extinct australopithecine that lived in East Africa roughly 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago, in the Pliocene. It is best known from the skeleton nicknamed Lucy, found at Hadar in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 1974, from the group of individuals called the First Family, and from fossil footprint trackways at Laetoli, Tanzania. It had a tall face, a delicate brow ridge and a projecting, robust jaw; Lucy stood perhaps 105 centimetres tall and weighed 25 to 37 kilograms, though she was small for her species. Leg bones and the Laetoli trackways show it was a competent biped, while arm and shoulder features suggest some tree climbing. It was probably a generalist omnivore that lived in open grasslands, woodlands, shrublands and lake- or riverside forests, and it is hypothesised to have given rise to Homo.