The conversation between human and AI assistant.
How do scientists know that Lucy is a pre-homo sapiens species, or early human, not a now extinct species of monkey?
That's interesting. But couldn't there be other extinct monkey species with similar skeletal characteristics?
While it's certainly possible, scientists have examined many different monkey species and none of them have the same combination of features as Lucy. Additionally, based on the age of the fossils and the geology of the region where they were found, it seems very likely that Lucy was indeed an early human.