I have read that she was a small primate with rickets/arthritis, or something in that vein and that she was not peer-reviewed until several years after her discovery.
You know...Bones of Contention.
Lucy seems to be a pretty good find. Certainly a very small primate, but she looks to have been bipedal. Somewhere on the direct line or very close. There is a lot of good data there (about 40% complete) and there have now been some 30+ years to digest and evaluate the discovery.
The rickets/arthritis idea does not seem credible. That's the same explanation initially given for the first Neanderthal (from the Neander Valley in Germany, something like 1856). The disease theory was based largely on the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the bones, and was discarded almost immediately. I have never seen anything on Lucy that suggest any such.
And let me assure you, the fossil casts of Lucy have been examined by just about every good paleontologist in the world, along with many folks in related sciences (I examined many of the older fossil man casts in school, but not Lucy). Any of these folks would love to make a name for themselves by finding something the discoverers missed and publishing it--a true "gocha" moment.
I think you can take the recent published literature pretty much at face value. That is not to say there is no contention over nomenclature or exact placement in the family tree, or that new finds may not shed more light on the exact placement of Lucy, but the differences are being worked out with a lot of study and discussion. That's the nature of science.
Thank you for the response.