The very first human child?
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
We all know the story of Lucy, the first uncovered ape-human like Australopithecus Afarensis. It’s the first evidence that beginning 3.3 million years ago, our ancestors slowly was becoming more human like. They stood up and got out of the trees. They started to use voices to communicate and tools to help themselves etc. Never has anyone seen a child, until today when Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged (a native to Ethiopian) at the Max-Planck Institute unveiled the first A. Afarensis child. After years of digging (since 2000), Alemseged and team members were finally able to complete the story of a young girl.
The key feature that he and his team discovered include evidence for bipedalism (foot), a evidence of a voice box (hyroid) that support the tongue, and scapula that’s very gorilla like. The discovery of the hyroid is the first evidence that A. Afarensis can produce some kind of sound, though we don’t know if they could "talk." The discovery of a gorilla-like scapula (shoulder blade bone) certainly raises question about whether Afarensis lived a dual arboreal and terrestrial life. 
