# What happened to Lucy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 15, 2001, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293 "2001-08-15T00:20:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Anal\_Scurvy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c57346/32.png) [@Anal\_Scurvy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anal_Scurvy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/1 "2001-08-15T00:20:14Z")
I was just directed to [http://www.godhatesfundies.com/articles/chick\_bd\_part1.shtml](http://www.godhatesfundies.com/articles/chick_bd_part1.shtml) by somebody’s sig (an incredible site, btw) and, in the process of reading the refutation, ended up at: [http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055\_01.asp](http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp) there’s a passage, two lengthy panels coloured yellow, in which Chick destroys the ape-to-man chart. At the god hates fundies addy, a link is given so the writer doesn’t have to debate the chart. However, the link he gives only discusses the Piltdown Man, most of which I already knew. What about Jack’s attack on Lucy and Heidelberg and Peking and Nuw Guinea (which, I will confess, I’ve never heard of before) and all the rest? What is the scientific version of what he says? Thanks in advance ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/2 "2001-08-15T01:46:15Z")
Maybe [talkorigins](http://www.talkorigins.org) can help. It’s an excellent website. I’d spend more time replying but I have to go to dinner now; I’m not trying to be rude. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/3 "2001-08-15T01:48:33Z")
Lucy is at home in the basement of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. We had a thread on the same subject a few months ago, [What’s this guy talking about? weird religious letter to the editor](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=50002). The trigger was a letter to a newspaper rather than Jack Chick, but they’re all reading from the same script. Lucy (despite Hovind’s lie that the liar Jack Chick repeats) is not considered a chimp by anyone. She is classified as _Homo Afarensis_. Nebraska Man was never accepted by anyone (except Creationists) as a forerunner of man. The man who _tentatively_ identified the tooth as proto-human had already recognized it as a pig tooth in less than a year from its discovery. (This is one of the really Big Lies of Creationists.) Piltdown man was a hoax and was never widely accepted as real by the anthropological community even before the hoax was revealed. While the stooped posture that had earlier been attributed by a few people to Neandertal was probably based on the disease of one of the earliest specimens, the overall skeleton is radically different from human. Cro-Magnon is a straw man in that he is generally considered to be a “modern” human by all except Creationists spreading lies. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/4 "2001-08-15T04:27:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Lucy is at home in the basement of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Actually the original bones have been [sent back to Ethiopia](http://www.museum.cmich.edu/lucy.htm), and are now in the [Ethiopian National Museum](http://www.ethiopians.com/arts/nationalmuseum.htm). The CMNH does have [casts of the bones](http://www.cmnh.org/research/physanth/); a CMNH researcher discovered them. > [@](#): > > Lucy (despite Hovind’s lie that the liar Jack Chick repeats) is not considered a chimp by anyone. She is classified as _Homo Afarensis_. _Australopithecus afarensis_. She was a member of our family, Hominidae, but not of our genus, _Homo_. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/5 "2001-08-15T04:45:29Z")
Thanks for the updates. I had heard they were talking of sending her home, but I missed the story when they actually sent her. The switch from Australopithecus is a small surprise. Again, I know they keep messing around with the categories, but the couple of (apparently old) references I have on _Afarensis_ still put it in _Homo_. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/6 "2001-08-15T11:20:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > **Piltdown man was a hoax and was never widely accepted as real by the anthropological community even before the hoax was revealed.** I don’t know how widely it was accepted, but it did fool quite a few scientists. From the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ > [@](#): > > Woodward claimed that the fossils represented a previously unknown species of extinct hominid (E. dawsoni) that could be the missing evolutionary link between apes and early humans. His claims were eagerly and uncritically endorsed by some prominent English scientists… ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-lucy/76293/7 "2001-08-15T14:23:53Z")
When I read the thread title I thought the question was going to be “what was Lucy’s cause of death?” Do her bones provide any insight into this question? Do we know how old she was or any diseases she might have carried?