ASU Research E-Magazine: Lucy Goes to College

The Institute of Human Origins was like a rare, scientifically valuable fossil bone lying out in plain sight that nobody bothered to take back to the laboratory. The nonprofit paleoanthropological institute had been independent of any university since its founding in 1981 by Donald C. Johanson.

Then along came Arizona State University, which offered to become IHO’s academic home. The Arizona Board of Regents and the IHO Board of Directors approved the move in April.

Johanson launched his scientific career with the 1974 discovery of “Lucy,” the 3.2 million-year-old fossil skeleton of a human ancestor from Ethiopia. An impressive series of significant discoveries have followed. Just last November, IHO researchers announced the discovery of a jawbone in Africa’s Hadar region that extends the human genus back to at least 2.3 million years.

The IHO will bring to ASU a staff of six, who will make their administrative home in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Johanson and colleagues William H. Kimbel and paleontologist Kaye Reed will teach graduate and undergraduate courses in the Department of Anthropology. They and other IHO scientists also will conduct research and mount an ambitious public outreach program.

“This is an auspicious event for the science of paleoanthropology,” says Ian Tattersall, curator and chairman of Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

“Over its relatively brief existence, the Institute of Human Origins has made unparalleled material and intellectual contributions to our knowledge of human evolution,” he says.

“With the formal backing of one of this country’s premier academic institutions, its gifted staff will be free to explore new research directions while participating actively in the creation of the next generation of paleoanthropologists. This is a perfect merger of competencies, and will place ASU at the center of future advances in our knowledge of how we, Homo sapiens, became the extraordinary creatures we are.”—Steve Koppes