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It's the Ancients on History Hit.

I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's episode where we're going to Africa more than 3

million years ago to talk about this species now called Australopithecus, the Southern

apes that was certainly on the human line. It lived in Africa for a couple of million years,

for a few million years both before the emergence of Argenus, the genus Homo and also lived

alongside these early species of the genus Homo, for instance Homo, Habilis.

Now when someone mentions Australopithecus, your mind might immediately go to one of the most

well-known archaeological discoveries ever made, the discovery of the partial skeleton.

Lucy, because Lucy was an Australopithecus in particular an Australopithecus afferences.

Now in today's episode we will certainly be covering the story of Lucy. However,

since Lucy's discovery there have been some more extraordinary fossils uncovered in Africa

of Australopithecus and we're also going to be focusing on these two, particularly the story

of a child, a baby girl just under three years old called the Dikikachild. It's an incredibly

poignant but extraordinary discovery in recent times. Now to explain all about this and more,

I was delighted to get back on the podcast. A good friend from the Natural History Museum,

he's been on reason he needs to talk about early Homo, so Homo Habilis in the first humans,

but also talking about a species that he's done a lot of work around Kenyantropas platyops

and their association with the first tools, with them being potentially the first

...