Latest Donald Johanson Stories

A fossilized arched foot bone recovered from Ethiopia shows that our human ancestors walked upright 3.2 million years ago, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, belongs to a group of the famed hominid Lucy, and indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis.  The findings are the first evidence to address the question of how this species moved around."This fourth...

Officials from the Seattle Science Center paid millions to show the fossil remains of one of the earliest known human ancestors, but the exhibit failed to produce the expected returns.President Bryce Seidl said on Friday the Pacific Science Center faces a half-million-dollar loss resulting in layoffs of 8 percent of the staff, furloughs and a wage freeze only halfway through the five-month exhibit.The museum spotlighted the 3.2 million-year-old fossilized partial skeleton of a species with...

By Simon Usborne It was 1974 and Dr Donald Johanson and his student, Tom Gray, were heading back to camp after a fruitless morning searching for fossils in the scorched ravines of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Then something in the dust caught Gray's eye. It was part of an arm, immediately recognisable as hominid, or human-like. As the American paleoanthropologists looked further, they spotted fragments of a skull, thigh, ribs and jaw. Bone sightings in the Awash valley, one of the world's most...

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,...