A new exposition center, The Discovery Times Square Exposition, was launched in New York City, and featured the 3.2 million-year-old fossil known as “Lucy.” For many museum enthusiasts and ethnographers alike, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But the exhibit didn’t close with a bang. The gallery ignited more racist fear about a common African ancestor than genuine interest on the subject of human species - a fact that boggles me, given my Ethiopian heritage, and should boggle all of you (my fellow Ethiopians?) who are reading this.

Dr. Yonas Beyene, co-leader of the archaeology team and Head of Archaeology and Palaeontology at the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture and Tourism told us, “The 110 pound, 4 foot female who lived a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor, will be open to the public soon at Addis Ababa Ethiopian National Museum.”#