On June 24th, 2024, the Post Authority of France (La Poste) issued the stamp
"50 years of the discovery of Lucy".
The stamp has a rate of an international letter with weight up to 20g.
Two stamps make a rate of an international letter with weight up to 100g.
Rather than show the fossil of the "Lucy", La Poste depicted the reconstruction
of Australopithecus afarensis and stages in human evolution underneath.
Below are quotes from an official press release, published by La Poste in 2024.
In the 1970s, the discovery of Lucy's bones on the banks of the Awash River in
Ethiopia
irreparably changed our vision and knowledge of the origins of the human species.
The skeleton of "Lucy" on postage
stamp of Ethiopia 2013
(MiNr.: 1918, Scott: 1782)
and postcard sent to Germany in 2015.
It all happened on November 24, 1974, when several members of the International
Afar Research Expedition uncovered a few isolated fossil bones emerging from the wall.
The clearance continues, involving the directors of the mission
(the geologist Maurice Taieb and the paleo-anthropologist Donald Johanson),
the paleontologists Claude Guillemot and Yves Coppens, as well as Ethiopian students
and researchers: the whole is preciously collected under the number scientific
reference AL 288-1.
It will take two years to publish this discovery in the prestigious journal Nature
(1976), and two more years to give it the name of a new species
(Australopithecus afarensis) and a precise dating: 3.18 million years.
Since then, other fossils have been discovered, but less well preserved
(52 bone fragments are preserved for Lucy, or 40% of the entire skeleton!):
isolated mandible, child skeleton, cranial elements, etc.
It is from Lucy that the antiquity of bipedalism (even partial) could be demonstrated,
well before the appearance of the process of increasing brain volume.
Its bone density, the morphology of its hips and knees, and the opening of its pelvis
show an individual sharing simian and human traits: a subject of approximately 25 years
old, 1.10 m in height, and less than 30 kg.
We all know the anecdote widely reported by Yves Coppens – “Lucy’s dad”, who died on
June 22, 2022 –: it was while listening, on the excavation site, to the Beatles
song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” that the idea came to the discoverers to name
it that way.
But its name in Amharic – the natural language of Ethiopia – is even more loaded with
meaning: Dinqnesh (“you are wonderful”).
How judicious this baptismal name now appears…
Australopithecus afarensis on worldwide postage stamps and postmarks.
Image credit: Peter Brandhuber, admin of the Facebook group
"Evolution of mankind and Philately"
Notes:
[1] The Philatelic Document is a product intended for philatelists
but also for the public.
It shows the stamp, the engraving, the 1st day date stamp and the embossed seal of the Périgueux printing house.
The text and illustrations have been specially and uniquely created for this document.
It is printed on Arches vellum.
The simple document is in 210 x 297 mm format and printed in intaglio.
References:
Technical details and official press release:
La Poste,
colnect
Many thanks to
Dr. Peter Voice from Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Western Michigan University,
for review of a draft of this article.