COVER N. 494 - FRANCE

Postmark: Musée de La Poste Paris 08.07.2024

Posted on the 8th July; Received in (?) August 2024

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On the 24th November, this year, Lucy will be 50 years old... plus some 3.2 million years, for that is the estimate age of the fossilised hominine skeleton (or,  rather, 40% of it) that Prof. Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray discovered at Hadar, in Ethiopia.

This finding filled an important gap in the materialisation of evidence of the transition to bipedalism which led to the emergence of Man, as we now know it.

The discovery of such a large quantity of remnants from a single hominine - an Australopitecus afarensis, to be more precise -  skeleton that old was such an extraordinary occasion that the team involved in the unearthing of it had an all night long party on the night of the first day of excavation.

All through the long and lively night, the famed Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamons" was played several times, what lead to someone having the  idea of naming the skeleton after the hero of the song. (This of course goes to prove that Palaeontologists are people of good taste....)

At the time of the finding, Lucy was the oldest hominine fossil ever found, but since then others have been discovered, with particular relevance to the case of Lucy's cousin Ardi, who at 4.4 million years old is the holdera of the record for the oldest hominine skeleton in existence.

Lucy was taken to the United States to be "recomposed" as best as possible and she is now kept at the National Museum of Ethiopia, at Addis Ababa.

Un grand merci Roland, for this very fine cover, obliterated with a postmark from the Musée de la Poste, in Paris.

The 50 years of the discovery of Lucy are the subject of the 1,96 € stamp, issued on 24JUN2024, illustrated with a rendition of what Lucy would supposedly look like.

The stamp is cancelled with a postmark from the Musée de la Poste, in Paris, an institution whose origins can be traced back to the Musée Postale de France, founded in 1946, thanks to the perseverance of Eugène Vaillé, a librarian with the French Postal Administration of the time.