Australopithecenes Archives | Liz at Lancaster Guest House Blog

Pop songs, dynamite and lost property – human stories from paleontology

Posted on February 12, 2019September 8, 2021 by liz

How did Lucy get her name? Do you know where Lucy the 3.2 million year old Australopithecus Aferensis got her name from? Lucy was found in many pieces in 1974 in Hadar north-east Ethiopia by a paleoanthropologist, Donald Johansen. When the expedition returned to camp after working at the recovery site, the Beatles “Lucy in the […]

An idiots’ guide to the origins of humankind: part 1

Posted on January 16, 2019September 30, 2023 by liz

Human ancestory: fraught with complexity Africa and South Africa in particular, have been the site and source of many ground-breaking finds of our human ancestory. The world of paleontology is fiercely competitive with specialists arguing about classifications – where are humankind’s roots? Hominin or hominid? the transition from ape to man; dating; new species, etc. […]