Discoverer of skeleton to speak at YSU

By Denise Dick

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Renowned American paleoanthropologist and author Donald Johanson, who is credited with the co-discovery of the female skeleton Lucy, will present a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 23 in the Ford Family Recital Hall of the DeYor Performing Arts Center in the city’s downtown. Question-and-answer and book-signing sessions will follow.

Johanson is the current and founding director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. In his 30 years of field and lab research in paleoanthropology, he is most notably credited with the co-discovery of the female skeleton Lucy, estimated to have lived more than 3 million years ago. The finding of this hominid led to several books co-written by Johanson, including the widely read “Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.”

Johanson has a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Chicago and honorary doctorates from Case Western Reserve University and Westfield State College. The lecture is sponsored by the Youngstown State University Center for Applied History and the university’s Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies, Biology Department, Dale Ethics Center, the Colleges of CLASS and STEM, the Office of the Provost, the Anthropology Colloquium, YSU Alumni and Phi Kappa Phi.