Lucy the Australopithecus: Google doodles 41st anniversary of her discovery - Watch

Google marked the anniversary of the discovery of the skeleton in 1974 with a special doodle.

New Delhi: Internet search giant Google on Tuesday marked the 41st anniversary of the discovery of the skeletal remains of Lucy with a moving doodle on its homepage.

The doodle features a walking Australopithecus afarensis who is placed in between an ape and modern human, indicating how Lucy's discovery filled the gap between the two.

Lucy is the name given to a collection of fossilised bones that once made up the skeleton of a hominid from the Australopithecus afarensis species, who is proven to have lived around 3.2 million years ago in Ethiopia.

First discovered in 1974 by archaeologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray, 40 per cent of Lucy's fossilised remains were found intact, giving them enough information about the species.

'Lucy' acquired her name from the Beatles song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds', which was played loudly and repeatedly in the expedition camp all evening after the excavation team's first day of work on the recovery site.

Lucy, which skeleton is preserved at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, was 3.7 feet tall and 29 kgs in weight.