Ethiopia: 'Lucy' to Go to USA

Ethiopia: 'Lucy' to Go to USA
By Dagnachew Teklu
Addis Ababa

'Lucy' aka 'Dinknesh', the famed paleontological discovery of human fossils dating back to 3.5 million years, will be traveling to the US, officials disclosed.

Ethiopian Culture and Tourism officials said Lucy's fossil will be taken to a museum in the US as part of the new national campaign recently launched to promote tourism Minister of Culture and Tourism, Ambassador Mohammed Dirir, said the Lucy's exact date of departure was not yet decided but preparations are underway to finalize the necessary preparation.
According to Dirir, the country's share of receipts from global tourism remains meager.

He said the government's objective was to change this reality and place the country among the top 10 African destinations by 2020.

Lucy was found 24th of November 1974, at the site of Hadar, the Afar Regional State by archeologists Donald Johansson and Tom Gray on the.

The couple had taken a Land Rover out that day to map in another locality. After a long, hot morning of mapping and surveying for fossils, they decided to head back to the vehicle.
On their way back, Johansson suggested taking an alternate route back to the Land Rover, through a nearby gully.

Within moments, he spotted a right proximal ulna (forearm bone) and quickly identified it as a hominid. Shortly thereafter, he saw an occipital (skull) bone, then a femur, some ribs, a pelvis, and the lower jaw.

Two weeks later, after many hours of excavation, screening, and sorting, several hundred fragments of bone had been recovered, representing 40% of a single hominid skeleton.