Analyzing “See Lucy Run, 3.2 Million Years Ago”

 Published on January 31st, 2025, in the New York Times article “See Lucy Run, 3.2 Million Years Ago,” the author, Franz Lidz, first introduces “the early human ancestor” named Lucy and how scientists are still discovering more and more news from her autopsy of her death over 3 million years ago. Lucy apparently died falling out of a tree, and in a new study it’s been discovered that Lucy, referred to by scientists as “the female Australopithecus afarensis,” was very capable of running on her two feet, however not as fast as the average human. When analyzing this article you can properly see ways that the author decides to present the findings of the scholarly article in a way that would keep readers engaged. While also including other pieces of information relevant to his original topic to give the readers a better understanding of the relevancy of this topic. 

 Now, the way that Mr. Lids decided to present his information was very interesting, to say the least. He first included a video demonstrating how “Lucy” was not a natural runner, which, as a reader myself, interested me enough to read the rest of the article. With another quick scroll through the article, there’s also another GIF included comparing the running of Lucy to the running of a modern day human. By having a visual interpretation of the research that they’re trying to present to their audience, this gives the readers a quick and simple understanding of what they’re reading about. If a reader isn’t understanding what is being explained in the article, they can simply look at the video and gif, read the caption, and understand what is being explained to them in this article.

 After analyzing how the author decided to present this information, we can begin to understand the main objective of the article. After explaining to the reader who “Lucy” was, he references a report created earlier this year (Bates et al. 2025) which explains how despite Lucy having the ability of running, she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the average human today. Using these comparisons, the author starts to explain to the reader how these findings relate to the process of evolution for humans and how they support the hypothesis that the ability to run was an adaptation for humans to try to catch prey. The GIFs in the article also make it way easier to understand the differences between Lucy’s running and an average human running today.

  Throughout the article, in my opinion, there’s no sense of tone or voice in the article. Which does make sense, as this article is just meant for presenting research and information to the public. However, despite there being no tone or voice in the article, the title itself already gives a good start in engaging readers to want to learn more about Lucy. “See Lucy Run, 3.2 Million Years Ago.” This is a big eye catcher for readers lurking on the New York Times website. Rather than a boring informative title, this title makes readers actually want to learn more about runners 3.2 million years ago.

 In conclusion, Franz Lidz created an amazing article summarizing the findings of the scholarly article “Running performance in Australopithecus afarensis.”. Despite not having a tone or voice in his paper, Mr. Lidz had another way of interesting readers in his topic by providing images through the article. While also including many comparisons to humans of today, the most interesting being Usain Bolt, to give readers a true understanding of the capability of running that Lucy had all those years ago. These factors overall made it a very engaging and interesting article.

Work Cited Page 

Franz Lidz. 2025 Jan 31. See Lucy Run, 3.2 Million Years Ago. The New York Times. [accessed 2025 Jan 31]. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/science/running-afarensis-lucy.html.

Bates KT, McCormack S, Donald E, Coatham S, Brassey CA, Charles J, O’Mahoney T, van Bijlert PA, Sellers WI. 2024. Running performance in Australopithecus afarensis. Current Biology. 35(1):224-230.e4. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.11.025. [accessed 2025 Jan 31]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982224015665.