Lucy, one of the best known ancestors of humans to ever roam the earth, may have died after a fall from a tree, University of Texas researchers said yesterday after studying her 3.18-million-year-old fossilized remains.
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John Kappelman, a University of Texas geologist who proposes the new hypothesis, called it ironic that the fossil that fueled debate about the role tree-climbing played in human evolution died falling out of one.
“Today these fractures are often seen in automobile accidents, but also an impact following a fall from height”, lead author John Kappelman, a professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin, told Discovery News. The bones are full of cracks – a lot can happen to a skeleton over 3.18 million years in the ground – but when the team analyzed the CT scan, it team found some that looked like the kind of bone fractures that happen when a body falls to the ground.
The analysis is an important contribution to the scientific tracking of our forebears’ evolutionary journey from tree-dwelling foragers to tool-wielding shapers of nature. After comparing her to chimpanzees, he and his colleagues believe that she likely fell from a height of approximately 40 feet, traveling at a speed of over 35 miles per hour, and landed feet-first before she attempted to brace herself with her left arm. This would also mean that Lucy and others from her tribe might have spent more time clinging to trees than some paleontologists think. After checking with the National Museum of Ethiopia, where Lucy officially resides, the high-resolution 3D models of the bones scanned are available for free download to anyone who wants them. “How much time, and how frequently, we don’t know at present”, said Kappelman.
It was a coup when Kappelman and Richard Ketcham, a professor of geological sciences at UT, hosted Lucy in the basement of the university’s Jackson School of Geosciences in September 2008.
The research team who discovered Lucy believed her bones were broken after she had already died.
This research highlights that human ancestors were not as terrestrial as humans, Begun says.
It has always been a mystery as to how Lucy the Australopithecus died.
Because Lucy was a small, light mammal, a fall from a significant height would provide the force necessary to break her bones and kill her.
“Not all breaks are created equal, and our focus with Lucy is on a small subset of fractures that appear to be different, compressive fractures that appear to have been produced by high-energy bone-to-bone impacts at some of the major joints in Lucy’s body”. The earliest humans climbed trees and walked on the ground. “My understanding of her death brought her to life for me”. Not only is this for the informational factor, but scientists are hoping to continue the educated debate on how exactly Lucy did die. She had long arms like an ape, a protruding belly, a low forehead and the ability to navigate trees. It is likely that she was conscious when she landed from her fall, but the severity of her fractures suggests she very likely suffered severe internal damage, probably affecting every organ, and death followed swiftly, Kappelman added.
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The original fossil and CT scans of fractures to her skeleton paint a more vivid portrait of what happened in Lucy’s final moments, and although it was probably swift, it wasn’t without pain. Researchers have found other fossils of her species with similar fractures, suggesting more falls.
