"Lucy" the 3 million-year-old skeleton

[Mangosteen]

Does anyone know why this skeleton was named after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”?

[What_Exit]

@Mangosteen

Does anyone know why this skeleton was named after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”?

That is how I remember it and here’s a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis

[What_Exit]

Let me Clarify, it was playing as they confimred there incredible find.

[Q.E.D]

The following year Johanson’s team discovered another fossil that is still a landmark in the story of human origins. “Lucy” – named for the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which was played in the camp when the scientists celebrated their discovery – was the most complete hominid skeleton that had been found up to that time. Although Lucy’s skull was incomplete, enough of it remained to show that she had a small, apelike brain, and other skulls of her species found at the same site confirmed it.

From here.

Hey, paleoanthropologists like good rock.

[picunurse]

Yes and no. I have the book Lucy; The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson & Maitland Edey in front of me. In the Prologue, page 18, I quote:

“Lucy?”
That is the question I always get from somebody who sees the fossil for the first time. I have to explain: “Yes, she was female. And That Beatles song. We were all sky-high, you must remember, from finding her.”…
That first nightwe never went to bed at all. We talked and talked. We drank beer after beer.There was a tape recorder in the camp, and a tape of the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds went belting out into the night sky, and was played at full volume over and over again out of sheer exuberance. At some point during that unforgettable evening --I no longer Remember exactly when-- The new fossil picked up the name of Lucy, and has been so known ever since, although its proper name-- ts acquisition number in the Hadar collection --is AL 288-1"