Archaeologists and palaeontologists widely hold that the australopiths played a significant part in human evolution, being the first of the hominins to show presence of a gene that causes increased length and ability of neurons in the brain, the duplicated SRGAP2 gene.
This difference, and because the lumbar spines of Nacholapithecus (a Miocene hominoid with six lumbar vertebrae and no tail) are similar to those of early Australopithecus and early Homo, it can be assumed that the Chimpanzee-human last common ancestor (PHLCA) also had a long axial column with a long lumbar region, and that the reduction in the number of lumbar vertebrae occurred independently in each ape clade.
Lucy (Australopithecus) | Australopithecus africanus | Australopithecus afarensis | Australopithecus |
The most famous fossil is the partial skeleton named Lucy (3.2 million years old) found by Donald Johanson and colleagues, who, in celebration of their find, repeatedly played the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
In an accompanying news article published with the initial descriptions in 2010, detractors of the idea that A. sediba might be ancestral to the genus Homo (e.g. Tim White and Ron Clarke) suggest that the fossils could be a late southern African branch of Australopithecus, co-existing with already existing members of the Homo genus.
Also in 1997, the near-complete Australopithecus skeleton of "Little Foot", dating to around 3.3 million years ago (although more recent dates suggest it is closer to 2.5 million years ago), was discovered by Ron Clarke.
Along with Maurice Taieb and Yves Coppens, he is known for discovering the fossil of a female hominid australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia.
The Dwayyo, Dewayo, which is "officially" known as Dwayosapientherapsida Australopithecus Rexus, is a cryptid sighted primarily in West Middletown, Maryland, but sightings have also been reported in Wolfsville, Maryland.
On March 13, 1974 a David L. Wolper Productions crew filming a National Geographic history of Australopithecus at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area was killed when the Convair 440 Sierra Pacific Airlines plane crashed shortly after take off from the airport killing all 35 on board including 31 Wolper crew members (but not Wolper himself).
A member of the 1973 expedition to Hadar, the archeologist Donald Johanson, returned to Hadar the next year to make the first discovery of the remains of Lucy, a three million year old fossilized specimen of Australopithecus afarensis.
The first recognition came in 1995 for his co-authored work with Prof. Ron Clarke of Wits on the taphonomy of the Taung site and in 1998 for his co-authored work with Prof. Henry McHenry of the University of California, Davis on limb lengths in Australopithecus africanus.
In 1997, a near complete skeleton of a second species of Australopithecus (StW 573) was found in the caves by Ronald J. Clarke; extraction of the remains from the surrounding breccia is ongoing.