Q 01/05

The famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton nicknamed Lucy was discovered in 1974 in which country?

A) South Africa

B) Kenya

C) Tanzania

D) Ethiopia

Answer · why

D) Ethiopia

Donald Johanson's team found her at Hadar in the Afar Triangle; locally she is called Dinkʼinesh, Amharic for 'you are marvellous'.

Q 02/05

Lucy the fossil was named after a song by which band, played in camp the night she was found?

A) The Beach Boys

B) The Rolling Stones

C) The Beatles

D) The Kinks

Answer · why

C) The Beatles

'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' gave a household name to a collection of several hundred bone fragments making up 40% of a skeleton.

Q 03/05

Lucy's small skull and two-legged gait support which idea about the order of human evolution?

A) Tool use came before bipedalism

B) Bipedalism came before larger brains

C) Larger brains came before bipedalism

D) Speech came before bipedalism

Answer · why

B) Bipedalism came before larger brains

A 2016 study suggests her species still spent part of its time in the trees, though how much is debated.

Q 04/05

Homo floresiensis, the 'Hobbit', was discovered in 2003 on an island of which country?

A) Papua New Guinea

B) Indonesia

C) Philippines

D) Malaysia

Answer · why

B) Indonesia

The Flores remains belong to people who stood only about 1.1 metres tall and survived until roughly 50,000 years ago.

Q 05/05

Which island evolutionary phenomenon explains the tiny size of Homo floresiensis?

A) Insular dwarfism

B) Neoteny

C) Convergent evolution

D) Founder effect

Answer · why

A) Insular dwarfism

Its ancestors are thought to have reached the island around 1.27–1 million years ago; the debate is over whether they were shrunken Homo erectus or an...