Lucy's Child

the discovery of a human ancestor

Plot

Don Johanson discovered Lucy, the most famous and one of the most complete of hominid remains, in 1974. His controversial interpretation of the remains as representing an ancestor to all subsequent hominid species, including our own, and his bestselling book "Lucy - the Beginnings of Humankind" established him as the most famous living palaeontologist, his one rival being Richard Leakey, whose views of human evolution remain entirely opposed to Johanson's. In this book, Johanson weaves together the story of his return to Africa in 1986, and the discovery of another extraordinary hominid specimen, with a history of the search for human origins and of his bitter disagreements with Leakey.