who is Lucy the Australopithecus

Who is Lucy the Australopithecus? Five facts you might not know about the oldest hominid ever discovered

Lucy has been honoured with a Google Doodle on the 41st anniversary of her discovery

A sculptor's rendering of Lucy when she was alive, displayed at the Houston Museum 

of Natural Science in Texas Dave Einsel/Getty Images

As honoured in today's Google Doodle, 24 November is the 41st anniversary of the discovery of 'Lucy', the name given to a collection of fossilised bones that once made up the skeleton of a hominid from the Australopithecus afarensis species, who lived in Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago.

First discovered in 1973, the discovery of Lucy was remarkably 'complete' - 40 per cent of her skeleton was found intact, rather than just a handful of incomplete and damaged fossils

important fossils ever discovered, when researchers released that she belonged to a previously unknown species.

She was named after The Beatles song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'

After making the historic find, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson headed back to his campsite with his team.

He put a Beatles cassette in the tape player, and when Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds came on, one of the group said he should call the skeleton Lucy.

"All of a sudden, she became a person," Johanson told the BBC.

Google Doodles

One of the most important things about Lucy is the way she walked - by studying her bones, in particular the structure of her knee and spine curvature, scientists were able to discover that she spent most of her time walking on two legs - a striking human-like trait.

No-one knows how she died

The few clues we have about Lucy's cause of death can only rule things out, rather than providing solid answers.

There's not much evidence of teeth-marks anywhere on her skeleton, suggesting she was not killed and scavenged by other animals after she died.