14 DAY TRIAL // An exhibit at a Seattle museum, which currently houses the remains of one of the world's oldest humanoid fossils, is getting far less attention than the organizers originally predicted. The Pacific Science Center paid millions of dollars to get the rare exhibit in the city, but, thus far, interest has been fairly limited, and, half-way through the five-month exhibit, personnel needed to be cut down and salaries frozen on account of the fact that the organizers reported they were $500,000 short of their goal.
Lucy is a 3.2 million year-old Australopithecus afarensis specimen that was discovered in 1974 near Hadar, in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. The partial skeleton has chimp-like features, but experts have managed to unveil that she walked up straight, which certainly makes the remains a missing link in human evolution as we understand it.
Pacific Science Center president Bryce Seidl said on Friday that the entire layout of the exhibition was custom-created to house Lucy, and that it featured a large variety of artifacts. Because Lucy was found in Ethiopia, the curators for the museum also thought to bring on site a number of relics, to complement people's perception on the age in which the oldest humanoid remain lived.
"It's a powerful story of evolution and culture and history [...] but we're not getting the attendance we need for an exhibit of this scale," he complained. The official added that the visit of potential visitors was complete with audio tours and interactive displays, meant to give people a feeling that they were part of the evolution that had been unfolding on Earth more than 3 million years ago.
However, Seidl explained that it was disappointing that not many people came, because this implied a very low interest in our own history, and that everyone should see what we looked like before modern times and maybe even learn a lesson from it. Lucy's discovery, more than 30 years ago, meant a thorough reshaping of evolution theories, and forced a wind of change on the scientific community.