# Australopithecus afarensis **Domain:** Human Evolution / Paleoanthropology **Doc Type:** Canonical Species Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **_Australopithecus afarensis_** is an extinct hominin species known from East African fossils dating to roughly 3.9–2.9 million years ago. Its anatomy combines habitual bipedalism with features compatible with substantial climbing. ## Lucy Context AL 288-1 is the famous partial skeleton nicknamed Lucy. The Smithsonian dates it to about 3.2 million years and identifies the Hadar site and discovery team. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] uses Lucy to connect deep ancestry, Bay Area human-origins institutions and the later filmic figure in [[wiki/Lucy (2014)|Lucy]]. The fossil and fictional character must remain separate nodes: one is empirical evidence about an extinct hominin; the other is a cultural model of substrate transition. ## Key Insight **Lucy anchors human continuity in an embodied evolutionary lineage while reminding the post-biological corpus that ancestry precedes abstraction.** ## Sources / Provenance - Smithsonian Human Origins Program, AL 288-1: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/al-288-1 - Smithsonian, _Australopithecus afarensis_: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/australopithecus-afarensis ## See Also [[wiki/Hadar|Hadar]], [[wiki/Donald Johanson|Donald Johanson]], [[wiki/Lucy (2014)|Lucy]], [[wiki/Evolutionary Biology|Evolutionary Biology]]