As the Cleveland Museum of Natural History prepares for the unveiling of its landmark transformation in December, FreshWater is highlighting some of the research that happens, both within the museum’s walls and around the world. Today, we celebrate the 1974 discovery of everyone’s favorite Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy.

Fifty years ago on Nov. 24, 1974, a Land Rover with a couple of Cleveland fossil hunters rumbled into a camp in Ethiopia’s badlands.

Barbara (Bobbie) Brown, a trustee of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, helped 50 years ago to find Lucy, the world's most famous ancient hominin, or member of the human family“They drove in honking their horn, very excited,” recalls Barbara (Bobbie) Brown, then a volunteer from Hunting Valley and now a retired Chardon paleontologist, or specialist in human evolution. “They had a sample bag with bones.”

Those bones became among the world’s most famous. They belonged to an ancient hominin, or member of the human family, soon dubbed “Lucy” after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Brown and her comrades from the U.S., France, and Ethiopia spent days scouring the sun-bleached gully of sand, gravel and rock where Lucy’s first fossils had been spotted by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s (CMNH) Don Johanson and his Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) student Tom Gray.

The crew found several hundred more bones or fragments, totaling about 40% of Lucy’s skeleton and far more complete than any set of bones that had yet been found for any other extinct hominin. Lucy was later estimated to be 3.18 million years old, far older than any other hominid find.

Dr. Donald Johanson, museum curator who discovered LucyTwo years later, Brown started earning a post-doctorate from Kent State University, partly by spending long hours at CMNH, reassembling Lucy’s 3½-foot tall skeleton and sculpting replacements for missing bones.

Scientists determined that Lucy belonged to an unknown species, which they subsequently named Australopithecus afarensis. Her pelvis, knee, and other parts showed that she walked upright. Her cranium was about the size of a chimp’s, reversing a long-held belief that big brains preceded balance.

Brown eventually helped cast replicas of Lucy’s fossils, then kept CMNH’s promise to Ethiopia—flying there with the precious originals wrapped in toilet paper inside a small canvas suitcase in the overhead compartment of the plane.

Brown spent the next 21 years making important discoveries about hominins and apes in Africa and Pakistan. She says she loved “figuring out the puzzle pieces. We have such incredible diversity.”

Lucy’s second life

In the past 50 years, Lucy has been outdone by other hominins discovered that about 90% complete or more than 6 million years old.

But Brown says, “She remains a milestone. She’s still really important.”

Other experts agree. “She still serves as a benchmark for all future findings,” says Johanson, who left Cleveland in 1981 to found the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, California, then moved it in 1997 to Arizona State University. “Her influence has been enormous.”

Lucy has even given her name to a spaceship. The ship flew last year past an asteroid called Dinkinesh—an Ethiopian word for “marvelous” that an Ethiopian in Johanson’s crew wanted to be Lucy’s namesake.

The heartland and the homeland

Lucy put Northeast Ohio in the forefront of human evolution science in 1974—drawing researchers from around the world.

Since then, according to Brown and others, the region has stayed in the forefront, despite its relatively small institutions and great distance from humanity’s ancestral home. Scientists affiliated with CMNH, CWRU, Kent State University (KSU), Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) or, in some cases, more than one of these institutions, have been leaders in key discoveries about human origins.

“Cleveland has a great place in the Lucy story and human origins research,” says Yohannes Haile-Selassie, who leads Johanson’s Institute of Human Origins and spent 20 years at CMNH, found three new species of hominins and a nearly complete cranium.

The journal “Nature” called Haile-Selassie one of “10 people who mattered in science in 2019.”

Other CMNH notables have included former museum director Bruce Latimer; associate and paleontologist Tim White; and Denise Su, collaborator and wife of Haile-Selassie.

CMNH anthropologist Emma FinestoneAmong newcomers in 2022, Elizabeth Sawchuk helped discover the earliest known human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa, about 18,000 years old.

Emma Finestone helped discover early human tools and molars, a find named a top scientific achievement of 2023 by National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and Nature Ecology and Evolution.

CWRU geologists, including James Aronson and Beverly Saylor, have analyzed the material surrounding important fossils.

The star and the supporting actress

In the 1970s, the debonair, outgoing Johanson gained much publicity and support for the field. He won a National Book Award, an Emmy nomination, and, between marriages, a berth on eligible bachelor lists.

Bobbie Brown, on the other hand, dresses simply, speaks matter-of-factly, and has gained little attention beyond professional and civic circles.

Dr. Donald Johanson, museum curator who discovered LucyJohanson says he appreciates Brown. “She was an excellent field worker, highly enthusiastic, easy to get along with, and totally dedicated to the project.”

Like the primates she studies, Brown has noteworthy origins. Relatives include President William Howard Taft, the U.S. Navy’s first ace, a Hunting Valley mayor, and the creators of a surviving 1819 mansion in Trumbull County’s Bloomfield Township called Brownwood, which sheltered runaway slaves.

Brown’s forebears helped establish CMNH in 1920 and lent the museum a house on Millionaire’s Row. The Brown family later covered some of Johanson’s costs in Ethiopia.

Several relatives have worked at the museum, including Brown’s aunt and namesake, Barbara Brown Webster, director of public services; Webster’s son Harvey, ambassador and chief wildlife officer; and his wife, the former Doris Andreoli, who managed Johanson’s busy office.

Brown grew up with dogs, chickens, turkeys, and horses. She volunteered at digs in Geauga County and Indiana. She went to Ethiopia as part of her junior year abroad from Connecticut College. She plays down the hardships of the Lucy expedition and plays up its rewards.

“You’re finding bones all the time: gazelles, pigs, elephant skulls...” she says. “I found a clutch of fossilized crocodile eggs. We were finding hippopotami and crocodile teeth all over the place.”

As for the tropical sun, she says she stopped bothering with sunscreen after a few days there. “I don’t burn,” she declares.

Bobbie Brown from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History helped 50 years ago to find fossils from Lucy, then the oldest and most complete known member of the human family.Back at the museum, Brown helped KSU’s prominent C. Owen Lovejoy recreate Lucy’s skeleton. “Bobbie played a key role,” recalls Lovejoy. “She is a very talented sculptor.”

Brown later earned post-doctorates at Ohio University, Johns Hopkins, and Yale University, and wrote a dissertation at Harvard University. She found fossils in Kenya and Pakistan, sometimes with her paleoanthropologist husband, Steven Ward.

She taught at NEOMED and has published at least 12 papers.

In 2000, she retired to raise two children. She remains active in civic affairs, partly as a trustee of CMNH and of Egypt’s American University.

Evolution science evolves

Since Lucy’s discovery 50 years ago, researchers in human evolution have learned much more from databases, DNA testing, 3D imaging, and other innovations

CMNH’s Sawchuk says the field has gained more women and, not coincidentally, more teamwork. Colleague Finestone adds, “We’re less human-centric today.”

These researchers look not just at hominins, but whole ecosystems.

Clevelanders and others have helped foster African scientists, labs, and museums.

In 2004, CMNH partnered with the National Museum of Ethiopia to share exhibits, research and more. Now almost all finds stay in their homelands, where scientists from Cleveland and elsewhere study them.

The world-famous Lucy displaySawchuk led a conference in Africa last year and a report this year publicizing the continent’s need for a DNA lab.

By now, scientists have identified more than 20 hominin species, some of which co-existed with Lucy’s line. Our family tree looks more like a bush. Sawchuk says most people of European descent are 1% to 4% Neanderthal.

Given such complexities, scientists are not as sure as they once were that Lucy’s species was among our direct ancestors. Still, Johanson and many others who have worked in Cleveland consider her the strongest known candidate.

Brown says there’s only way to tell. “We just have to find more stuff,” she says.

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is commemorating its famous discovery with a free exhibit called “Celebrating Lucy” through this Sunday, Nov. 24.