There are controversies. As for the most famous of this team, there is no doubt: she is a 20-year-old girl, 1.20 meters tall, probably killed by a crocodile, and who spent about 3.2 million years under the sands of Ethiopia until she was discovered in 1974. For some time, Lucy, this Australopithecus afarensis, was considered our Eve. More recently, a team led by paleontologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie, from the University of California, found remains of individuals that lived in this same region of Africa, there are also 3.2 million years. What is new is that these were classified as belonging to a primitive subspecies, named Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba. Then there was, in Kenya, the fossil of the skull of someone who lived about 3.5 million years ago – 200,000 years before Lucy and her contemporaries, therefore.
Finally, again in Kenya, they found remains of a creature that would have lived 6 million years ago and thus represent the oldest hominid ever identified. According to its discoverers, it is a new species, which received the name of Orrorin tugenensis. But the finding has been questioned by other scientists, for whom Orrorin would belong to a completely different species, with no relation to ours. It is worth waiting for the next old chapters of history.
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