What the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy fossil reveals about nudity and shame

What the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy fossil reveals about nudity and shame

Popular renderings of Lucy tend to dress her in thick, reddish-brown fur. Dave Einsel/Getty Images By Stacy Keltner, Kennesaw State University Fifty years ago, scientists discovered a nearly complete fossilized skull and hundreds of pieces of bone of a 3.2-million-year-old female specimen of the genus Australopithecus afarensis, often described as “the mother of us all.” During a celebration following her discovery, she was named “Lucy,” […]

June 24, 2024 20

Environment

Fossil beetles found in a Botswana diamond mine help us to reconstruct the distant past

By Sandiso Mnguni, University of the Witwatersrand When most people think of fossils they probably picture bones. But there’s much more to the global fossil record: plants, shells, minerals and insects. The study of fossil insects is called palaeoentomology. Palaeoentomologists like myself seek out and study fossil insects that were trapped in mud which later became rock sediments, and those found in amber (tree resin). Very few deposits […]

April 11, 2024 22