Donald Johanson | |
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| Born | Donald Carl Johanson (1943-06-28)June 28, 1943 (age 81) |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign University of Chicago |
| Known for | Discovery of a new hominid,Australopithecus afarensis ("Lucy") |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Paleoanthropology |
| Institutions | Arizona State University |
Donald Carl Johanson (born June 28, 1943) is an Americanpaleoanthropologist. He is best known for discovering the fossil of a femalehomininaustralopithecine known as "Lucy" in theAfar Triangle region ofHadar, Ethiopia.
Johanson was born inChicago,Illinois to Swedish parents. He is the nephew of wrestlerIvar Johansson.
He earned abachelor's degree from theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1966 and hismaster's degree (1970) andPhD (1974) from theUniversity of Chicago. At the time of the discovery of Lucy, he was an associate professor of anthropology atCase Western Reserve University. In 1981, he established theInstitute of Human Origins inBerkeley, California, which he moved toArizona State University in 1997. Johanson holds an honorary doctorate fromCase Western Reserve University[1] and was awarded an honorary doctorate byWestfield State College in 2008.[2]
Lucy was discovered inHadar, Ethiopia on November 24, 1974, when Johanson, coaxed away from his paperwork by graduate studentTom 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 hominin. Forty percent of the skeleton was eventually recovered and was later described as the first known member ofAustralopithecus afarensis. Johanson was astonished to find so much of her skeleton all at once. Pamela Alderman, a member of the expedition, 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.
Abipedal hominin, Lucy stood about three and a half feet tall; her bipedalism supported Raymond Dart's theory thataustralopithecines walked upright. The whole team including Johanson concluded from Lucy's rib thatshe ate a plant-based diet and from her curved finger bones that she was probably still at home in trees. They did not immediately see Lucy as a separate species, but considered her an older member ofAustralopithecus africanus. The subsequent discovery of several more skulls of similar morphology persuaded most palaeontologists to classify her as a species calledafarensis.[3]
Johanson and Maitland A. Edey won a 1982 U.S.National Book Awardin Science[a] for the first popular book about this work,Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.[4]
AL 333, commonly referred to as the "First Family", is a collection of prehistoric homininid teeth and bones of at least thirteen individuals that were also discovered in Hadar by Johanson's team in 1975. Generally thought to be members of the speciesAustralopithecus afarensis, the fossils are estimated to be about 3.2 million years old.
Since 2013, Johanson has been listed on the Advisory Council of theNational Center for Science Education.[9]
