If the Tennessee authorities who forbade the teaching of evolution in the state and precipitated the Scopes Monkey Trial were around today, it would be interesting to see what they would make of the new archaeological discoveries. Large parts of a skeleton of an early human was found in a cave dig in Africa — a human believed to have lived 3.2 million years ago. And more recent discoveries built on and expanded what we know about our proto-ancestors.

On this day, March 31, in 1994, the journal Nature reported another major discovery of a Australopithecus Afarensis fossil – a skull, 70% intact, from a large adult male. It was easily the largest single-piece bone find of that species. Analysis confirmed it belonged to the same group as the “Lucy” fossil from 1974; and both fossils revealed interesting stories about our evolution.

The Australopithecus Afarensis species were somewhere between ape and man. They had no tails and walked upright, but their facial features were simian – a long, protruding snout – and they had a hooked fingers suitable for tree-climbing. Lest we get a sense of superiority, marveling at how primitive that species was, it is estimated they survived 900,000 years — about double the current length of us homo sapiens.