'Lucy's Legacy' exhibit earns praise

A sophisticated exhibit in New York’s Discovery Times Square Exposition is winning rave reviews and placing new emphasis on the world-famous “Lucy” fossil.

L.A. Splash Magazine’s worldwide travel editor, Babbie De Derian, touts the wonders of “Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia” on the publication’s online site, deeming the original Lucy fossil and the exhibit “not to be missed.”

The De Derian article features several photos of the exhibit, as well as photos of Ethiopia, courtesy of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which originally hosted “Lucy’s Legacy” and organized it in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Exhibition Coordinating Committee.

The multimedia exhibit boasts over 100 artifacts and is divided into two parts. The first chronicles Ethiopia’s history from the ancient Kingdom of Aksum and the Solomonic Dynasty to the modern reign of Emperor Haile Selassie.

The second section focuses on the early hominids that lived in Ethiopia and includes the actual Lucy fossil, which is normally housed in a vault in the EthiopianNaturalHistoryMuseum in Addis Ababa.  

The 3.2-million-year-old Lucy was discovered in 1974 by paleoanthropologist Don Johanson, a professor at ArizonaStateUniversity’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the founding director of the Institute of Human Origins in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia” runs through October 25, 2009, at the Discovery Times Square Exposition.