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Prof. Donald Johanson

Donald Carl Johanson (born June 28, 1943 in Chicago) is an American paleoanthropologist. Along with Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White, he is well known for the discovery of the skeleton of the female hominid australopithecine known as "Lucy", in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia.

Johanson 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.

Dr. Johanson established the Institute of Human Origins, in Berkeley, California in 1981. Johanson and the Institute moved to Arizona State University in 1998.

The skeleton (approximately 40% complete if the bones are paired; 20% if one is merely counting the number of bones discovered as a percentage of a complete australopithecine skeleton) was discovered by Tom Gray (an archaeologist working under Johanson's direction) November 24, 1974 while on an anthropological mission funded in part by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, of which Johanson was the curator. The skeleton was dubbed "Lucy." The name was coined because the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was played repeatedly the night the skeleton's excavation was completed (November 30th). Lucy is remarkably well-preserved. She stood approximately three and one half feet tall - the important aspect of that statistic being that she stood. The pelvis and thigh bones in particular were used not only to identify Lucy's sex but also to confirm Raymond Dart's earlier 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 although bipedal she was probably also at home in trees.

Johanson was justifiably excited by his team's find (by tradition, all finds are credited to the team leader regardless of who actually made the discovery) and gave the specific epithet afarensis to Lucy, after the region of the Middle Awash River valley where she was found. Subsequent discoveries and research have placed Lucy's species on a side branch of the human evolution tree, but this in no way diminishes the importance of the find.

• Johanson, Donald and Maitland Edey (1981) Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-25036-1
• Johanson, Donald and James Shreeve (1989) Lucy's Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor. London: Viking. ISBN 0-670-83366-5
• Johanson, Donald and Blake Edgar (1996, Revised 2006) From Lucy to Language. New York: Siemens & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-81023-9
• Johanson, Donald and Giancarlo Ligabue (2000) Ecce Homo: Writings in Honour of Third-Millennium Man. Art Books Intl Ltd. ISBN 88-435-7170-2

• Australopithecus afarensis
• List of fossil sites (with link directory)
• List of hominina (hominid) fossils (with images)
• Multi-regional origin
• Single-origin hypothesis

• "I've always thought that risk-taking is an important part of what it means to be human."

• Bio: Dr. Donald C. Johanson

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