[AndrewC]

So now Lucy's a chimp?

Well, that might have been strong. Let us just say uncertain(whatever that means).

Lucy, Meet Ken

Image Credit-- FRED SPOOR, © National Museums of Kenya

NEW ENTRY into the hominid ranks

When the American Association of Physical Anthropologists gathered in Kansas City, Mo., in March, Kenyanthropus platyops stole the show. Meave Leakey of the National Museums of Kenya talked about the 3.2-million to 3.5-million-year-old fossil remains from northern Kenya's Turkana Basin. Previously, the only hominid thought to have existed during that time was Australopithecus afarensis, the species to which the famed Lucy fossil belongs and from which all later hominids—including ourselves—appeared to be descended. But the new fossil leaves Lucy's ancestral status uncertain. This early hominid diversity, Leakey says, may have resulted from adaptations to new ecological niches opened up by the spread of so-called C4 plants, which created bushy grasslands and grassy woodlands—a shift that has been used to explain diversification among other mammals from that period. Not everyone agrees that the new fossil warrants a new genus, however. "Time will tell whether we were right or wrong," Leakey remarked. "At least this makes people ask more questions."

[VadeRetro]

Well, that [Lucy = chimp] might have been strong.

It might have been wrong. Has Lucy's bipedel posture been discredited?

Let us just say uncertain(whatever that means).

When Lucy [ = Australopithecus afarensis] was the only known hominid species of her time, she was the best [ = so far only] candidate to carry the human ancestral lineage. Now she has a contemporary, so there's another candidate. That would seem to be the uncertainty, not that she's suddenly a chimp as is often claimed in the kind of pamphlet trash which only a naysaying Luddite dolt would credit.