Reply to: Charlier et al. 2018. Mudslide and/or animal attack are more plausible causes and circumstances of death for AL 288 (‘Lucy’): a forensic anthropology analysis. Medico-Legal Journal 86(3) 139–142, 2018

Abstract

The Pliocene hominin fossil ‘Lucy’ (A.L. 288-1, Australopithecus afarensis) was discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 1974 and dates to 3.18 million years in age. In Kappelman et al.,1 we presented the results of a detailed investigation of the skeleton that for the first time identified and described unusual bone-into-bone compressive fractures at several of the major long bone joints. Using multiple criteria, we concluded that these fractures are more likely to be perimortem than postmortem in nature. We next evaluated a number of possible mechanisms that could have produced these fractures and, on the basis of all of the evidence, hypothesised that a fall from considerable height, likely out of a tree, with its resulting vertical deceleration event, most closely matched the pattern of fractures preserved in the skeleton and was also the probable cause of death. Charlier et al. disagree with our approach and hypothesis, and instead present what they consider to be better evidence supporting two of the other possible mechanisms for breakage that we also investigated, a mudslide/flood, or an animal attack. We here show that the evidence presented by Charlier et al. is incorrectly interpreted, and that these two alternative hypotheses are less likely to be responsible for the fractures.

Early Pleistocene cut marked hominin fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya

“…While it is assumed that Pliocene and early Pleistocene hominins were sometimes the victims of predation by the many taxa of larger carnivores with which they coexisted, taphonomic evidence for such interactions in the form of carnivore chewing damage or tooth marks on hominin fossils is relatively uncommon. In 2011, Hart and Sussman 1 listed 10 hominins dated to between 6 million years ago and 50,000 years ago with evidence of terrestrial carnivore or raptor predation; this list does not include carnivore damage on Australopithecus anamensis fossils from Kanapoi and Allia Bay, Kenya 2 , 3 and Australopithecus africanus fossils from Member 4 of Sterktfontein, South Africa 4 ; a tooth mark on the pelvis of the AL 288–1 (“Lucy”) Australopithecus afarensis partial skeleton from Hadar, Ethiopia ( 5 , though see 6 for an alternate interpretation of this mark); tooth marks on the Paranthropus robustus SK 54 cranium from Swartkrans, South Africa 7 ; and at least two Homo habilis specimens from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania with evidence of crocodile predation 8 .…”