924 that had anatomical, environmental, and behavioral similarities to modern man but that preceded the morphology and behavior of the genus Homo. Australo-pithecus africanus, as well as other species attached to the genus Australopithecus, emerged in the Early Quaternary, and Australopithecus appears to have been both distinct from and previous to Homo (Robinson, 1981, passim; Day, 1981, p. 1045). Yet the former's apparently rational predatory behavior served as the basis for Dart's theory that anthropoid behavior, notably tool/weapon-based hunting, preceded the more rationally refined Homo sapiens (Ardrey, 1961, pp. 30-33).
The oldest dated example of Australopithecus appeared in Ethiopia in 1974, in the form of a 3 million-year-old headless skeleton termed Australopithecus afarensis, informally named "Lucy" after the popular song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and deriving its species name from the Afar region of Ethiopia (Fischman, 1995; Lemonick, 1994; McDonald, 1994). At the time of its discovery, Lucy was considered the oldest hominid ancestor, or "lin
...