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Early Human Ancestor Lucy 'Died Falling Out of a Tree' (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: New evidence suggests that the famous fossilized human ancestor dubbed "Lucy" by scientists died falling from a great height -- probably out of a tree. CT scans have shown injuries to her bones similar to those suffered by modern humans in similar falls. The 3.2 million-year-old hominin was found on a treed flood plain, making a branch her most likely final perch. It bolsters the view that her species -- Australopithecus afarensis -- spent at least some of its life in the trees. Writing in the journal Nature, researchers from the U.S. and Ethiopia describe a "vertical deceleration event" which they argue caused Lucy's death. In particular they point to a crushed shoulder joint, of the sort seen when we humans reach out our arms to break a fall, as well as fractures of the ankle, leg bones, pelvis, ribs, vertebrae, arm, jaw and skull. Discovered in Ethiopia's Afar region in 1974, Lucy's 40%-complete skeleton is one of the world's best known fossils. She was around 1.1m (3ft 7in) tall and is thought to have been a young adult when she died. Her species, Australopithecus afarensis, shows signs of having walked upright on the ground and had lost her ancestors' ape-like, grasping feet -- but also had an upper body well-suited to climbing. The bones of this well-studied skeleton are in fact laced with fractures, like most fossils. By peering inside the bones in minute detail, the scanner showed that several of the fractures were "greenstick" breaks. The bone had bent and snapped like a twig: something that only happens to healthy, living bones. "The Ethiopian ministry has agreed to release 3D files of Lucy's right shoulder and her left knee. So anyone with an interest in this can print Lucy out and evaluate these fractures, and our hypothesis, for themsleves." You can find the files here.
and think WTF they were so stupid.
Picture yourself in the middle of a jungle
On a tangerine tree under marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
And she's gone
Lucy on the ground with broken leg
Lucy on the ground with broken leg
Lucy on the ground with broken leg
Ouch
How will we know for sure until we make a few dozen clones of Lucy and fling them out of tall trees?
3D prints of an arm, indeed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lucy and Jack sitting in the Tree
K-i-s-s-i welp... thud...
It's not clear to me as to why 'getting trampled by a large animal' is ruled out. At just over 3-1/2 feet tall, she probably didn't weigh much. From what height would she have fallen from in order to break all of those bones?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Do you really need trees taller than 6 feet?
For roughly 6 million years, there appear to be multiple species of up-right-walking apes who also partly lived in trees and had roughly the same brain-size as chimps. It was a stable niche. Lucy was one of them.
Then new type of "ape" arose around a million years ago that relied ever more on tools and larger brains. The leading theory is that the climate started fluctuating heavily in Africa around that time, favoring adaptability over metabolic efficiency, and this is where human-ness branches off of ape-ness.
Table-ized A.I.
New evidence suggests that the famous fossilized human ancestor dubbed "Drumpfy" by scientists died falling from a great height -- probably out of a tree. CT scans have shown injuries to her bones similar to those suffered by modern drumpfs in similar falls. The 3.2 million-year-old homidrumpf was found on a treed flood plain, making a branch her most likely final perch. It bolsters the view that her species -- Australodrumpfthecus afarensis -- spent at least some of its life in the trees. Writing in the journal Nature, researchers from the U.S. and Ethiopia describe a "vertical deceleration event" which they argue caused Drumpy's death. In particular they point to a crushed shoulder joint, of the sort seen when we humans reach out our arms to break a fall, as well as fractures of the ankle, leg bones, pelvis, ribs, vertebrae, arm, jaw and skull. Discovered in Ethiopia's Afar region in 1974, Drumpfy's 40%-complete skeleton is one of the world's best known fossils. She was around 1.1m (3ft 7in) tall and is thought to have been a young adult when she died. Her species, Australodrumpfthecus afarensis, shows signs of having walked upright on the ground and had lost her ancestors' ape-like, grasping feet -- but also had an upper body well-suited to climbing. The bones of this well-studied skeleton are in fact laced with fractures, like most fossils. By peering inside the bones in minute detail, the scanner showed that several of the fractures were "greenstick" breaks. The bone had bent and snapped like a twig: something that only happens to healthy, living bones.
Even monkeys* fall from trees.
* To any lurking pedants, I'm aware of the distinction between monkeys and great apes.
The Earth has been here 4500 years, give or take a few. This is ludicround left-wing 'science' at its core. If this 'Lucy' did exist, it was no more than 4500 years ago.
Our ancestors should have stayed up there in the trees. The world would have ended up being a much better place.
I think it's evidence of the first divorce. That'll teach her for not fetching the bananas fast enough!
Solid argument let me paraphrase
Those scientists and their interpretation of the evidence is preposterous when clearly it was caused by unsubstantiated assumption, unsubstantiated assumption, unsubstantiated assumption but she died doing something that she was good at (unsubstantiated assumption) and probably killed an imaginary number with no basis in fact or any evidence to back it up.
Everyone dies of something.
Go and survey all the apes in the wild. Everything from murder to falling out of trees, to predators, to falling-out-of-trees-while-fleeing-predators.
Most animals DO NOT die of old-age. That's a very human-centric view.
Getting eaten is visible on the fossils. Disease is often visible too, or suspected only because there are no other injuries (which is suspicious in itself). Even Tutankhamen is thought to have had several fractures when he died and he was only a boy.
For a tree-dwelling species, dying from falling out of a tree is right up there. Once you slip once, whether learning toddler, careless adolescent or fleeing adult, you break bones that are a) visible on your skeleton and b) crippling to your ability to survive.
No antibiotics. No way to monitor or stem blood loss (especially internally). No knowledge to heal the bone. No painkillers. Can't keep up with the pack. You're dead. Hell, you could have just picked the rotten branch and by the time your weight was on it, it was too late to do anything.
Watch a cat. The most graceful of animals. Sure-footed. Sleek. Can land on their feet from stories up. Able to leap up and down trees at stupendous speeds with little or no warning, dive over obstacles, sprint faster than you ever could.
In the last year, from three cats in my house, two have fallen off a windowsill more times than I care to mention, one got trapped in a catflap (by backing out of it while half-way, requiring human intervention because it just kept pulling on it while its tail was caught in the flap the wrong way to escape the flap), one got stuck in a tree, one has a supreme deathwish where sitting in front of moving cars is concerned and only saved by driver prudence (i.e. me), one has come back with bloodied paws on more than one occasion (believed to be from a bad jump down from said tree again, onto sharp ground!), and that's not counting modern hazards, predators, actions made under panic, running between human legs on stairs, etc. for a domestic cat roaming a small garden territory.
I've actually just watched one fall off a sofa because it was sitting on the back of it, went to rub against my hand, misjudged it, and fell to the floor. It shook it off, but it completely messed up a simple action. And this was a young cat, not a kitten or something too-old-to-survive.
It's like saying a professional juggler never drops his balls, or that a professional acrobat never misses a leap. Ask them. They ALL do. They just don't always do it every show. But put enough shows on (i.e. climb enough trees) and it will happen eventually.
Few animals EVER reached old age, unless they were impregnable or zero-risk animals (e.g. tortoises, elephants until humans came along - slow, ploddering, no jumping, etc). Almost none of the hunter-cats ever really get to old-age because they all die of simple injury or infection of injury. There's not much to challenge an old established-pride lion, but the simplest of slips on a rock will kill him.
By a strange, orb-headed creature that had elements of the Bumblebee, which struck her multiple times with a prolate spheroid that had a casing made from bovine skin.
Falling out of a tree is probably how I'll go, too. Everything happens to me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
She didn't fall. She was pushed.
the future of porn is here today.
WTF? You think Dying from old age is more usual than dying from a fall? you obviously have no idea about the world outside of cities. old age would be an incredibly rare thing to die from in a world full of predators, injuries from falls that lead to death would be many times more common for any animal that climbs, even today monkey's will regularly suffer such fates.
So you're one of those crazy people who think our ancestors invented time travel?
How's that working out for you? Not very well since it seems your nuttiness has made you forget a very basic word, you know, descendants. It also made you forget how to spell ancestors.
Well, hope you find that time machine. You can use it to tell yourself to actually pay attention in school.
Lucy the Hominid climbing up a tree.
F, A, L, L, I, N, G
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Is that like saying she "fell" down the stairs in that era?
making the world a better place one sjw at a time !
She must have had a heart attack on the way down.
Was it a tree, or more like a branching bush?
Potentially exactly his "chance" death caused it to be preserved? If it had been eaten by a predator, we would not get a complete skeleton (more likely we'd maybe find a bone or a tooth somewhere, with scavengers carrying off what's left of the carcass).
There are many examples of preservation by accident, simply because the specimen in question did something extraordinary. Think of this one for example. He traveled, presumably alone, across the alps. Something you didn't do back then, there was nothing to prove or no reason to go for some kind of misguided "self-realization", back then people had real problems and didn't feel the urge to make their life harder to "feel it". So most people weren't stupid enough to climb onto glaciers. This guy did. And that's what preserved him while everyone else from his tribe has turned to dust long ago.
So yes, the random, odd sample may well be all we can still find.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So this super rare find didn't die from something usual, old age, disease, got eaten, but happened to die doing something it was very good at and probably killed 1/10000 of their kind.
Modern humans still climb trees; I have seen several programmes on the BBC, for example; one about the Baka people in Cameroun, who climb some 30 meters up in the canopy to gather honey from wild bees - another about a tribe in New Guinea, who build their homes in tall trees. The fact that we have found 1 fossil that probably died from a fall out of a tree doesn't mean that these people necessarily lived in trees or did things we don't do now-a-days.
LOOLOOOOOOLL our anchestors be so stooooopid!
I'm told it was a lovely service.
What did Lucy know that Hillary needed to hide?
Lucy!
Thank you from all of us in 2016.
No doubt, the reason for our dreams of falling. Where do our dreams of kidnapping come from?
so we're descended from the ones that fell... or pushed, or slipped on a banana peel...
it explains the amount of slapstick humor, wiley coyote cartoons, and comedy devoted to banana peels...
modern technology: 'I fell down and can't get up.
'
So one of our earliest known, not-quite-human, not-quite-ape ancestors died falling out of a tree?
What'd she land on? Irony?
vertical deceleration event
I'm going to have to write that one down.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Not necessarily. His ancestors may have been anchovies. Then they would be his anchestors.
Italian judges have opened a criminal investigation on Lucy's death and are currently rounding up suspects. The anthropologists who examined the body will be interrogated in the next weeks and it will have to be established why they performed the examination without the presence of an Italian law officer.
Potentially exactly his "chance" death caused it to be preserved? If it had been eaten by a predator, we would not get a complete skeleton (more likely we'd maybe find a bone or a tooth somewhere, with scavengers carrying off what's left of the carcass).
So why did not a scavenger take the carcass? How long til the sediment buried the remains? Did she fell off right next to a body of water?
The jokes just write themselves.
Leaving the sea was a mistake in the first place.
Are you referring to the aquatic ape hypothesis of WestenhÃfer, Hardy, and Morgan?
Take that evolution belivers!
Everyone dies of something.
Go and survey all the apes in the wild. Everything from murder to falling out of trees, to predators, to falling-out-of-trees-while-fleeing-predators.
Most animals DO NOT die of old-age. That's a very human-centric view.
Only since quite recently, as early as the 1950s the world average life expectancy was 48 (today it's 67). During the early middle ages people tended to die around 40-45 years of age. Palaeolithic hunter gatherers in Europe, both H. Sapiens and H. Neanderthalis did not usually live much past 30-35 or so. They usually died with badly worn teeth, abscesses, bones that show healed fractures, starvation marks and severe arthritis while child mortality was simply frightening.
This boost is mostly related to child mortality rates violently decreasing, and has little to do with the average age people reach if they survive past the child mortality window.
>there was nothing to prove or no reason to go for some kind of misguided "self-realization" He lived very recently and his brain was just like mine and yours. His need for a reason to live was as big as ours.
Review this comment by another user to the same comment you replied to:
https://science.slashdot.org/c...
Notice how he wasn't brow-beating the poster? He provided a very insightful that hopefully raised the overall "enlightenment" here.
You basically puffed up your chest and made this more about you being better than the original poster.
" The fact that we have found 1 fossil that probably died from a fall out of a tree doesn't mean that these people necessarily lived in trees or did things we don't do now-a-days"
No... but their upper body structure suggests they were built for climbing and spent at least part of their time in trees. Much more so than modern humans who may "climb some 30 meters up in the canopy to gather honey from wild bees" or "build their homes in tall trees".
I think you are spot on in that we cant say Lucy's folks were tree-dwelling exclusively, though.
He traveled, presumably alone, across the alps. Something you didn't do back then, there was nothing to prove or no reason to go for some kind of misguided "self-realization"
Otzi wasn't on a glacier. He lived during a warm period when there was little if any snow at the altitude he was found, although it was cold and dry enough to mummify his body.
His last days were far more interesting and violent than you think. He had cuts on his hands consistent with defending himself against a knife attack. He also had someone else's blood on the back of his shirt consistent with carrying a companion who was injured. He was carrying at least three weapons (a knife, an axe, and a bow/arrow). What killed him was an arrow in the back. It isn't clear if he was part of a raiding party or he was defending his village against one, but he was in a battle.
That was so fucking dumb that I am embarrassed for you.
How about falling into a pile of mud that instantly covered her?
Fossils are rare. For many reasons. One of them being that back then burial rites were not really the big craze and animals that die rarely get to fall apart where they fall to the ground. Carrion eaters tend to pluck them apart and carry parts away. Sometimes a corpse gets buried quickly by natural events. Falling into a swamp, or an animal suffocating from a volcano eruption and getting buried under ash.
Yes, that's rare. But so are fossils. If you consider just how many animals have lived on this planet and then compare that with the amount of fossils we have, it's actually amazing that we DO have Lucy at all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Outside of shamanistic, ritualistic use you don't see many people in primitive cultures go on "self realization, self discovery" trips. They tend to have real problems that need solving rather than worrying about the meaning of life.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
She didn't just fall off the tree. Her mind evolved while picking her butt up in the tree and she suddenly saw how futile everything is. Then she jumped to her death.
If Lucy was correctly wearing CSA/UL rated themsleves, she likely would have survived the fall. Also she should have been properly tied in with a fall lanyard and harness. And where were her supervisor and team members, for goodness' sake!?
We're going to have to fill out a C.14/R hazard form, login in to the Incident Management system and escalate. I want a Safety Coordinator to review the whole setup. Health & Safety is gonna have a bird.
Safety first!
she wasn't just participating in an early pre-cursor of MMA fighting?
Did the apple fall near, or far from the tree?
Just another day in Paradise
if she didn't give birth to another homo sapiens, technically she is not really an ancestor, but a cousin.