article_snippet.sent: Discovered in 1974, the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton stunned archaeologists who unearthed the fossil while digging in an isolated spot in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
article_snippet.sent: the ancient hominin's skeleton belongs to a species called Australopithecus afarensis and is around 40 per cent complete.
article_snippet.sent: When discovered in Ethiopia, Lucy was the only skeleton of a species called Australopithecus afarensis; Lucy would've stood 3.5 feet (about a meter) tall.
article_snippet.sent: Currently, more than 300 individuals of this species, which lived between about 3.85 million and 2.95 million years ago, have been uncovered .
article_snippet.sent: A comparative study of vertebrae from other Australopithecus fossils in that region disproved this theory.
article_snippet.sent: technique shows that Little Foot, an important fossil of an . early human forerunner unearthed in the 1990s in South Africa, . is roughly 3.7 million years old. '
article_snippet.sent: The age of Little Foot has been highly debated,' said .
article_snippet.sent: A comparative study of vertebrae from other Australopithecus fossils in that region found Little Foot, a member of the species .
article_snippet.sent: Australopithecus prometheus, lived at roughly the same time as .
article_snippet.sent: Australopithecus afarensis, the species whose most famous .
article_snippet.sent: fossil, known as Lucy, comes from Ethiopia.
article_snippet.sent: Both species blended ape-like and human-like traits but with different features.
article_snippet.sent: nearly complete Little Foot fossil skeleton from the .
article_snippet.sent: the human family tree including various representatives of Lucy's genus Australopithecus.
article_snippet.sent: Dr Simon Underdown, principal lecturer in anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, said: 'The co-mingling of skeletons is quite common in the archaeological record and it can often be difficult to separate out different elements if multiple bodies are mixed together. '
article_snippet.sent: the human family tree including various representatives of Lucy's genus Australopithecus to .