Lucy's last day: What the iconic fossil reveals about our ancient ancestor's last hours

From a distance, it might have looked like a small child was wending her way through the waving grass along a vast lake. But a closer look would have revealed a strange, in-between creature — a big-eyed imp with a small head and an apelike face who walked upright like a human.
She may have looked warily over her shoulder as she walked, on alert for saber-toothed cats or hyenas. But she likely had no idea it was her last day on Earth.
Roughly 3.2 million years later, her skeleton was unearthed by paleoanthropologists and the stunningly complete fossil was nicknamed "Lucy." Her remarkable species, Australopithecus afarensis, may have been our direct ancestor.
Our discoveries about Lucy have transformed our understanding of humanity's tangled family tree. In fact, anthropologists have learned so much about Lucy and her kind that we can now paint a picture of how she lived and died.