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Row as 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton tours U.S.

The 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton, one of man’s earliest ancestors, has been taken out of Ethiopia, where it was discovered, for a controversial six-year U.S. tour that scientists have warned will expose the fossil to a high risk of damage.

Scientists at the Natural History Museum in Addis Ababa arrived at work on Monday to find that the remains had been removed from the vault. Several staff members were also gone, reportedly bound for Texas with the artefact.

Last year Ethiopia signed an agreement to allow the Houston Museum of Natural Science to display the remains of the upright walking hominid from August 31. Several other U.S. cities were also on the itinerary of the tour.

Louise Leakey, a palaeontologist working in Kenya, described the news that the tour was proceeding as “very alarming.” “Lucy is irreplaceable and is now being placed at huge risk,” she said.

Standing just over one metre tall, Lucy had a small brain and resembled a chimpanzee. But her pelvis and leg bones were similar to modern humans, proving that she walked upright rather than on all fours. She was named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was playing in the scientists’ camp at the time of the find. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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