[Anthsoc] Famed fossil 'Lucy' to go on display in U.S.

[Colin Wallace]

This was just posted on CNN and I thought the Anthsoc would be 
interested. This could be a great field trip in the fall of 2007.

Colin

The framed hominid fossil 'Lucy,' is seen at a exhibition at the 
Ethiopian Natural History Museum in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa 
on Oct. 24, 2006.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- One of the world's most famous fossils -- the 
3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974 -- will 
go on display abroad for the first time in the United States, officials 
said Tuesday.

Even the Ethiopian public has only seen Lucy twice. The Lucy exhibition 
at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum in the capital, Addis Ababa, is 
a replica while the real remains are usually locked in a vault. A team 
from the Museum of Natural Science in Houston, Texas, spent four years 
negotiating the U.S. tour, which will start in Houston next September.

"Ethiopia's rich cultural heritage, and the vibrant country that it is 
today, is one of the best kept secrets in the world," said Joel Bartsch, 
director of the Houston museum.

The six-year tour will also go to Washington, New York, Denver and 
Chicago. Officials said six other U.S. cities may be on the tour. But 
they would not release the names, saying all the details had not yet 
been ironed out.

Traveling with Lucy will be 190 other fossils, artifacts and relics.

Security will be extremely tight amid concerns of possible theft or 
damage. Officials refused to say how much they had insured Lucy for or 
how much the Ethiopian government was being paid. Tourism and Culture 
Minister Muhammed Dirir did say money from the deal will go toward 
upgrading and building new museums in Ethiopia, one of the world's 
poorest countries.

Lucy, her name taken from a Beatles song that played in an 
archaeological camp the night of her discovery, is the partial skeleton 
of what was once a 3 1/2-foot-tall adult of an ape-man species.

The fossilized remains were discovered in the remote, desert-like Afar 
region in northeastern Ethiopia by U.S. paleontologists Donald Johanson 
and Tom Gray.

The creature was a member of Australopithecus afarensis, which lived in 
Africa between about 4 million and 3 million years ago, and is the 
earliest known hominid.

Most scientists believe afarensis stood upright and walked on two feet, 
but they argue about whether it had ape-like agility in trees. The loss 
of that ability would suggest crossing a threshold toward a more human 
existence.

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