"This was the most important discovery I had ever made in my life. It was a discovery which has irrevocably changed my whole life's direction. It immediately elevated me to the status of one of the world's leading anthropologists." -- Donald Johanson
Donald Carl Johanson (born June 28, 1943) is an American paleoanthropologist. Along with Maurice Taieb, and Yves Coppens he is known for the discovery of the skeleton of the female hominid australopithecine known as "Lucy", in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia.
"And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.""As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest.""But it really wasn't until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor.""But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures.""I realized immediately that this was a terribly important discovery, but I didn't realize how important it would be until we had spent a lot of time in the laboratory studying it.""I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.""I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.""I was very intellectually oriented, very early on.""In our case, finding a Lucy is unique. No one will ever find another Lucy. You can't order one from a biological supply house. It's a unique discovery, a unique specimen.""Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.""Most achievers I know are people who have made a strong and deep dedication to pursuing a particular goal. That dedication took a tremendous amount of effort.""My real father died when I was two years old, so I never knew him. He was a barber in Chicago.""Normally, we are happy to find a fragment of jaw, a few isolated teeth, a bit of an arm, a bit of a skull. But to find associated body parts is extremely rare.""One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it.""Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong.""There have been some friendships lost over this. That's the most difficult for me. I find it very uncomfortable to know that I was at one time close friends with someone, and because of jealousies and misunderstandings and so on, these friendships have dissolved.""When I realized, in 1978, that Lucy did represent a new species of human ancestor, and that I had an opportunity to name this new species, I realized this was a revolutionary step in understanding human origins.""When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit."
Johanson was born in Chicago, Illinois, and earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1966. He earned his master's degree in 1970 and his PhD in 1974 from the University of Chicago. At the time of the discovery of Lucy, he was an assistant and associate professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. Johanson also holds an honorary doctorate from Case Western Reserve University. In 1981, he established the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, California which he later moved to Arizona State University in 1998. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Westfield State College in 2008.
"Lucy"
Lucy was discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia on November 30, 1974, when Johanson, coaxed away from his paperwork by graduate student Tom Gray for a spur-of-the-moment survey, caught the glint of a white fossilized bone out of the corner of his eye, and recognized it as hominid. Forty percent of the skeleton was eventually recovered, and later described as the first known member of Australopithecus afarensis. Dr. Johanson's girlfriend suggested she be named "Lucy" after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" which was played repeatedly during the night of the discovery. A biped, Lucy stood about three and a half feet tall, and added support to Raymond Dart's theory that australopithecines walked upright. Johanson and his team were also able to deduce from Lucy's ribs that she was vegetarian, and from her curved finger bones that she was probably at home in trees.Lucy herself was not at once recognized as a disparate species, but was considered an older member of Australopithecus africanus, and only the later discovery of skulls of A. afarensis convinced the general palaeontological world that Lucy represents a species called afarensis.
"First Family"
AL 333, commonly referred to as the "First Family," is a collection of prehistoric hominid teeth and bones that were also discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia, by Johanson's team in 1975. Generally thought to be members of the species Australopithecus afarensis, they are estimated to be about 3.2 million years old and consist of the remains of at least thirteen individuals.
