Palaeoanthropologist, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. A graduate of Chicago University, he worked at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where he became curator in 1974. His spectacular finds of fossil hominids 34 million years old at Hadar in the Afar triangle of Ethiopia (19727) generated worldwide interest. They include Lucy, a unique female specimen that is half complete, and the so-called First Family, a scattered group containing the remains of 13 individuals. Since 1981 he has been director of the Institute of Human Origins, Berkeley, CA, and from 1986 began conducting fieldwork in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The Institute relocated to Arizona State University in 1998.
The skeleton was dubbed "Lucy". The name was coined because the Beatles song "Lucy in the sky with Diamonds" was playing over and over the night she was discovered. Lucy stands only three and one half feet tall. Dr. Johanson was extremely lucky in finding Lucy as well because the site Lucy was found on had already been excavated and he was only back at the site because he was showing someone else where the site was located. Dr. Johanson established the Institute of Human Origins, in Berkeley, California in 1981. Johanson and the Institute moved to Arizona State University in 1998.Johanson earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1966.
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