Or did her bones get broken from the weight of sand on her................ interesting.
continued at link
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...b7Kz&ocid=iehp
In 1974, the paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson led an expedition to Ethiopia to look for fossils of ancient human relatives.
In an expanse of arid badlands, he spotted an arm bone. Then, in the area surrounding it, Dr. Johanson and his colleagues found hundreds of other skeletal fragments.
The fossils turned out to have come from a single three-foot-tall female who lived 3.2 million years ago. The scientists named her species Australopithecus afarensis, and the skeleton was dubbed Lucy.
Four decades later, Lucy remains one of the most famous discoveries in paleontology. Finding a single bone of that age would have been reason to celebrate; finding so much from a skeleton revealed a tremendous amount about Lucy — and about human evolution in general.
Her death, on the other hand, has been a mystery. Now, after poring over the celebrated bones, a team of scientists has concluded that Lucy died most unceremoniously: killed by a long fall out of a tree.
If they’re right, the discovery could yield an important clue to how our ancestors evolved from tree-dwelling apes into bipeds that walked the African savanna. But the new study has experts deeply divided. Some researchers are praising the research, while others, including Dr. Johanson, think the authors have failed to adequately make their case.
The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature, came about because Lucy’s skeleton — normally housed at the National Museum of Ethiopia — was taken on a tour of the United States in 2007. After a show at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Lucy spent 10 days at the University of Texas at Austin, where scientists put her bones through a CT scanner.
“We just decided, by golly, we were going to scan every little bit of Lucy because it may never be done again,†said John Kappelman, a paleoanthropologist at the university.
Since then, Dr. Kappelman and his colleagues have painstakingly turned the scans into three-dimensional models, piecing together the virtual fragments to get a more accurate idea of their original shapes. Last December, he noticed a puzzling break in Lucy’s upper right arm.
A look through surgical journals suggested that the break might be a so-called compressive fracture, in which a force pushes down on a bone, sometimes even driving one bone into another.
What intrigued Dr. Kappelman was what could have caused such a compressive fracture: a fall from a great height. “It’s not something that would happen if you just tripped and fell,†he said.
Dr. Kappelman printed out a human-sized, three-dimensional model of Lucy’s shoulder and took it to Dr. Stephen Pearce, an orthopedic surgeon at the Austin Bone and Joint Clinic. Dr. Pearce agreed that the break was a compressive fracture. Other orthopedic surgeons consulted by Dr. Kappelman made the same diagnosis.
Dr. Kappelman and his colleagues decided to inspect all of Lucy’s bones for fractures that might have been caused by a fall. In addition to studying the virtual models, Dr. Kappelman also examined the original fossils in Ethiopia.
In 1974, the paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson led an expedition to Ethiopia to look for fossils of ancient human relatives.
In an expanse of arid badlands, he spotted an arm bone. Then, in the area surrounding it, Dr. Johanson and his colleagues found hundreds of other skeletal fragments.
The fossils turned out to have come from a single three-foot-tall female who lived 3.2 million years ago. The scientists named her species Australopithecus afarensis, and the skeleton was dubbed Lucy.
Four decades later, Lucy remains one of the most famous discoveries in paleontology. Finding a single bone of that age would have been reason to celebrate; finding so much from a skeleton revealed a tremendous amount about Lucy — and about human evolution in general.
Her death, on the other hand, has been a mystery. Now, after poring over the celebrated bones, a team of scientists has concluded that Lucy died most unceremoniously: killed by a long fall out of a tree.
If they’re right, the discovery could yield an important clue to how our ancestors evolved from tree-dwelling apes into bipeds that walked the African savanna. But the new study has experts deeply divided. Some researchers are praising the research, while others, including Dr. Johanson, think the authors have failed to adequately make their case.
The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature, came about because Lucy’s skeleton — normally housed at the National Museum of Ethiopia — was taken on a tour of the United States in 2007. After a show at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Lucy spent 10 days at the University of Texas at Austin, where scientists put her bones through a CT scanner.
“We just decided, by golly, we were going to scan every little bit of Lucy because it may never be done again,†said John Kappelman, a paleoanthropologist at the university.
Since then, Dr. Kappelman and his colleagues have painstakingly turned the scans into three-dimensional models, piecing together the virtual fragments to get a more accurate idea of their original shapes. Last December, he noticed a puzzling break in Lucy’s upper right arm.
A look through surgical journals suggested that the break might be a so-called compressive fracture, in which a force pushes down on a bone, sometimes even driving one bone into another.
What intrigued Dr. Kappelman was what could have caused such a compressive fracture: a fall from a great height. “It’s not something that would happen if you just tripped and fell,†he said.
Dr. Kappelman printed out a human-sized, three-dimensional model of Lucy’s shoulder and took it to Dr. Stephen Pearce, an orthopedic surgeon at the Austin Bone and Joint Clinic. Dr. Pearce agreed that the break was a compressive fracture. Other orthopedic surgeons consulted by Dr. Kappelman made the same diagnosis.
Dr. Kappelman and his colleagues decided to inspect all of Lucy’s bones for fractures that might have been caused by a fall. In addition to studying the virtual models, Dr. Kappelman also examined the original fossils in Ethiopia.
Planning to take in the Ark Encounter for your next vacation?
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