Israeli researchers: ‘Lucy’ not direct human ancestor

Israeli researchers said “Lucy,” a 3.2 million-year-old skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago, is not in fact the last ancestor common both to humans and the family of Robust hominids apes. The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that Tel Aviv University researchers published their findings in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor,” wrote Yoel Rak and colleagues at the Sackler School of Medicine’s department of anatomy and anthropology, according to the Post.