3D Bone Scans of Australopithecus “Lucy” Now Available Online

Lucy is over 3 million years old but she looks only 900,000 thanks to this one weird trick. Just kidding. Lucy is a famous collection of bone fossils of an Australopithecus, and earlier this week made 3D scans of some of her bones available. “The world’s most famous fossil is now open source. 3D scans of Lucy — a 3.18-million-year-old hominin found in Ethiopia — were released on 29 August, allowing anyone to examine her arm, shoulder and knee bones and even make their own 3D-printed copies. The scans accompany a Nature paper that argues that Lucy, a human relative belonging to the species Australopithecus afarensis, died after falling from a tree.”