![We Are All Homo, Even Lucy](https://cdn.slatesource.com/a/6/f/a6f82f57-62e7-4f06-a50e-2ecd91d02458.webp)

# We Are All Homo, Even Lucy

- [Made in Slatesource](https://slatesource.com/@steph/we-are-all-homo-even-lucy)
- By [Steph](https://slatesource.com/@steph)
- Created on Sep 21, 2026

## Lucy Just Got Reclassified, If One Researcher Has His Way

The fossil nicknamed Lucy is 3.2 million years old, found in Ethiopia in 1974, and known to science as Australopithecus afarensis. She has been in her own genus, separate from humans, for her entire existence in the scientific record. A paper published in August 2026 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology argues that classification is wrong, has always been somewhat arbitrary, and should be replaced. Under the proposal by Dr Ian Towle of Monash University, Lucy becomes Homo afarensis. The entire three-genus framework that has organised human evolution for more than 50 years would be retired in favour of one: Homo, stretching back 4 to 5 million years instead of the current 2 to 3.

[Towle (2026). Clades, Grades, and the Genus Problem: A Case for Revising Hominin \](https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.70344?utm_source=slatesource)

![](https://cdn.slatesource.com/a/6/f/a6f82f57-62e7-4f06-a50e-2ecd91d02458.webp)

## Credit: Wikimedia Commons (public domain). A composite of fossil skulls spanning \\

the three genera that Towle proposes folding into one.

## The Categories That Seemed Clear in 1960 No Longer Hold

The three-genus system assigned labels based on traits that seemed sharp in the 1950s and 1960s: brain size, diet, and tool use. Homo got the large-brained toolmakers. Paranthropus got the heavily built plant-grinding specialists. Australopithecus got everything else. For decades the categories held. Then the fossil record started arguing back. Homo naledi, named in 2015, has a brain roughly a third the size of modern humans and may be around 250,000 years old, meaning it coexisted with our own species. It sits inside Homo despite lacking almost every traditional criterion for the genus. Homo floresiensis, the Indonesian "hobbit," is similarly small-brained and similarly classified as Homo by convention.

## Why Australopithecus Is Called a Taxonomic Wastebasket

Meanwhile Australopithecus garhi has teeth larger and more robust than some Paranthropus specimens. The deeper problem is phylogenetic. Most analyses of the last decade find that Australopithecus is not monophyletic: it does not form a single evolutionary family. Different Australopithecus species appear to be more closely related to Homo or Paranthropus than to each other. Under the principles that govern the rest of evolutionary biology, a non-monophyletic genus is a classification error. Towle is not the first to point this out. He is making the case that it is time to fix it.

> Recent discoveries are eroding the usefulness and accuracy of current classification affecting species in Homo, Australopithecus and Paranthropus over the past 5 million years.

[Phys.org: Rethinking how we name and classify our human ancestors (August 2026)](https://phys.org/news/2026-08-rethinking-human-ancestors-evolutionary-discoveries.html?utm_source=slatesource)

## Lucy Becomes Homo afarensis. Nutcracker Man Becomes Homo boisei.

Adopting the proposal does not delete the species; it only changes the genus label. Lucy remains Lucy. The species afarensis does not disappear. What changes is the first word: Australopithecus afarensis becomes Homo afarensis. Paranthropus boisei, "Nutcracker Man" found by Mary Leakey in Tanzania in 1959, becomes Homo boisei. The genus boundary shifts from the current 2 to 3 million years ago to the node of Australopithecus anamensis at approximately 4 to 4.2 million years.

## Why the Field Will Take Time to Follow

Taxonomic revisions of this scope do not happen because one paper argues for them. The three-genus system is embedded in 50 years of literature, museum labelling, school curricula, and research grants. Towle himself notes his proposal is "unlikely to gain momentum" quickly. The last reshuffle at this scale, placing Homo habilis inside Homo rather than in Australopithecus, took decades of argument. What the paper does is make the inconsistency visible and formal. Whether the field responds by expanding Homo or by splitting Australopithecus into smaller monophyletic genera, either path would replace a 50-year compromise. That is the argument Towle has put into print.

[Full paper: Wiley Online Library, American Journal of Biological Anthropology](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.70344?utm_source=slatesource)