The night that American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson unearthed the oldest hominid skeleton in present-day Ethiopia was playing in the background Lucy in Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles. The year was 1974, and researchers named the most famous fossil after that song. The discovery of Lucy marked a turning point in evolutionary history: it showed that they Australopithecus afarensis, who lived approximately 3.2 million years ago, walked upright long before the emergence of the genus Homo. But for a decade it has been suspected that Lucy and her peers were not alone and that they are not the only candidates to be our direct bipedal ancestors.