Lucy's Child: Discovery of the Dikika Girl

Zeresenay Alaemseged - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology  

Abstract: Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged recently made headlines for his discovery of a 3.3 million year-old female child's skeleton of the early human ancestor Australipithecus afarensis. Found in Ethiopia, the skeleton, which is named "Selam", represents the earliest and most complete juvenile human ancestor ever found, having lived 150,000 years before Lucy. By its unprecedented age, completeness and state of preservation, the Dikika skeleton stands as one of the major discoveries in the history of paleoanthropology.

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