Lucy reconstruction

Lucy in Life

The live reconstruction of Lucy is speculative. There is no way of telling from skeletal material whether or not the live body was covered with hair.

Surprisingly little of Lucy's cranium was recovered, but the remains of associated crania suggest what Lucy may have looked like.

Various methods have been developed for predicting total body size (usually weight or height) from partial skeletal remains - mainly limb bones, but also molar teeth.

A. afarensis seems to have been very variable in size (30-80 kg) - perhaps sexually dimorphic, like the gorilla and orangutan today.

Alternatively, the Hadar specimens could encompass two species as some authors think.

The discovery of a well preserved skull by William Kimbel, Donald Johanson and Yoel Rak [Kimbel et al. 1994] dated at 3 million years supports the view of A. afarensis as a single but variable species.