Lucy Long Ago

“Exten­sive research, clear orga­ni­za­tion and writ­ing, appro­pri­ate pac­ing for new ideas and intrigu­ing graph­ics all con­tribute to this excep­tion­al­ly acces­si­ble intro­duc­tion to the mys­tery of human ori­gins, timed to accom­pa­ny Lucy’s six-year tour of U.S. muse­ums.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Here’s a non­fic­tion book that deserves the high­est of com­pli­ments: it reads like a sci­ence book … Thimmesh opens her nar­ra­tive with a poet­ic con­jec­ture that gives such adven­ture its mys­tery and due: “Long ago it lived … even before it had a name. It climbed trees; it roamed the savan­nah on two legs; it munched on berries and grass­es.” The answer to the implied question—“What is ‘it’?”—propels the read­er to turn page after page … a hand­some book, but also a sub­stan­tive one.” (The Horn Book)

“With unex­pect­ed sim­plic­i­ty and even poet­ry, Thimmesh uses two begin­nings to tell the sto­ry of the hominid who changed humans’ fam­i­ly tree … the final por­trait of Lucy as she may have looked is a stun­ner. Like the inves­tiga­tive method itself, this sparks ques­tions and also answers them.” (Book­list)

The Bea­t­les song “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” was play­ing the night pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gist Don­ald John­son found the first fos­silized remains of the hominid that became known around the world as Lucy. This extra­or­di­nary dis­cov­ery changed how sci­en­tists under­stood one of the basic con­cepts of human evolution—it proved that our ances­tors began walk­ing upright before the size of their brains increased. Thimmesh uses this dis­cov­ery to explore sev­er­al top­ics in the fields of anthro­pol­o­gy and evo­lu­tion­al biol­o­gy, such as how the bones were fos­silized, the process for decid­ing that Lucy belonged to a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown species (Aus­tralo­p­ithe­cus afaren­sis), and the cast-mak­ing process that allowed bio­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gist Owen Love­joy to recon­struct her pelvis and prove that she was bipedal. The author even touch­es upon what fos­sils can’t teach us about our ancestors—their emo­tions and fam­i­ly pat­terns. The final chap­ter dis­cuss­es the process used by pale­oartist John Gurche to cre­ate a life-size sculp­ture of Lucy. The book’s great­est strength is how it under­scores the flu­id­i­ty of our under­stand­ing in a field like anthro­pol­o­gy; it shows how one dis­cov­ery can change the think­ing of sci­en­tists in a dra­mat­ic way. This book also empha­sizes the rig­or of the sci­ences that study our human ances­tors and explains clear­ly how these sci­en­tists care­ful­ly take the known to for­mu­late new ideas about the unknown parts of our human his­to­ry. The clear writ­ing, excel­lent pho­tographs, and the unique approach of explor­ing the field of anthro­pol­o­gy through one spec­tac­u­lar spec­i­men make this book a first pur­chase. (Car­o­line Tesauro, Rad­ford Pub­lic Library, VA, School Library Jour­nal)

““Every time Ms. Thimmesh writes a new book my heart goes pit­ter-pat, and this book was no excep­tion with its fan­tas­tic length, great pic­tures, and superb research.” (Eliz­a­beth Bird, Fuse #8)