关于科普类英语文章阅读.docx

关于科普类英语文章阅读
人类祖先露西因何而死
Lucy, the most famous fossil of a human ancestor, probably died after falling from a tree, according to a study appearing in Nature led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
Lucy, a 3. 18-mi1lion-year-old specimen of Australopithecus afarensis - or ''southern ape of Afar” - is among the oldest, most complete skeletons of any adult, erect^alking human ancestor.
Since her discovery in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 1974 by Arizona State Universityanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray, Lucy - a terrestrial biped - has been at
the center of a vigorous debate about whether this ancient species also spent time in the trees.
“It is ironic that the fossil at the center of a debate about the role of arboreal ism in human evolution likely died from injuries suffered from a fall out of a tree,“ said lead author John
Kappelman, a UT Austin anthropology and geological sciences professor.
Kappelman first studied Lucy during her U. S. museum tour in 2021, when the fossil detouredto the High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility UTCT in the UT Jackson School of
Geosciences - a machine designed to scan through materials as solid as a rock and at a higher resolution than medical CT. For 10 days, Kappelman and geological sciences professor Richard
Ketcham carefully scanned all of her 40-percent-complete skeleton to cre