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Lucy in the sky with diamonds

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We go out on a related musical footnote to the announcement about Ardi. It’s about Ardi’s younger sister — so to speak — Lucy.

Her 3-million-year-old bones were discovered in Ethiopia back in 1974. Lucy was named by the head of the team that discovered her — Donald Johansen.

After finding the skeleton on November of that year, Johansen and his team celebrated in their camp that night … drinking, singing, and listening to the Beatles this song in particular.

Strangely — this week we also heard the news that the real-life Lucy — the inspiration for John Lennon’s song — had died. Lucy Vodden had been a classmate of Lennon’s son, Julian.

John Lennon told the story many times of how Julian had come home one day from school with a drawing of a girl. Who’s that? asked his dad.

That’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds, said Julian. In recent years Lucy Vodden had contracted Lupus, a disease in which the immune system attacks body tissue.

Julian Lennon had reached out to Lucy Vodden again. But at the age of 46 this week, Lucy passed away. Immortalized though in music and — oddly — in the name given to a 3-million-year-old skeleton kept in a glass case in Ethiopia.

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