Yves Coppens (born 1934 in
VannesVannes is a commune in the Morbihan department in Bretagne in north-western France. It was founded over 2000 years ago.-Geography:Vannes is located on the Gulf of Morbihan at the mouth of the Vannes River. It is around 100 km northwest of Nantes and 300 km west of Paris...
,
MorbihanMorbihan is a department in the northwest of France named after the Morbihan , the enclosed sea that is the principal feature of the coastline.-History:...
) is a French
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
. He graduated from the University of Rennes. He has studied ancient
hominidThe Hominidae The Hominidae The Hominidae (anglicized Hominids, also known as great apes
["Great ape" is a common name rather than a taxonomic label and there are differences in usage...]
s and has had multiple published works on this topic, and has also produced a film.
Coppens is one of the co-discoverers of
LucyLucy is the common name of AL 288-1, the nearly 40% complete skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis specimen discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago...
. The "Rift Valley theory", proposed and supported by the Dutch primatologist
Adriaan KortlandtProf. Dr. Adriaan Kortlandt was a Dutch ethologist.He was famous for his work on displacement activities and the hierarchy of instincts. Already in the thirties he realised the common characteristics between instincts in humans and other animals...
, became better known when it was later espoused and renamed by Coppens as the "East Side Story".
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Yves Coppens (born 1934 in
VannesVannes is a commune in the Morbihan department in Bretagne in north-western France. It was founded over 2000 years ago.-Geography:Vannes is located on the Gulf of Morbihan at the mouth of the Vannes River. It is around 100 km northwest of Nantes and 300 km west of Paris...
,
MorbihanMorbihan is a department in the northwest of France named after the Morbihan , the enclosed sea that is the principal feature of the coastline.-History:...
) is a French
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
. He graduated from the University of Rennes. He has studied ancient
hominidThe Hominidae The Hominidae The Hominidae (anglicized Hominids, also known as great apes
["Great ape" is a common name rather than a taxonomic label and there are differences in usage...]
s and has had multiple published works on this topic, and has also produced a film.
Coppens is one of the co-discoverers of
LucyLucy is the common name of AL 288-1, the nearly 40% complete skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis specimen discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago...
. The "Rift Valley theory", proposed and supported by the Dutch primatologist
Adriaan KortlandtProf. Dr. Adriaan Kortlandt was a Dutch ethologist.He was famous for his work on displacement activities and the hierarchy of instincts. Already in the thirties he realised the common characteristics between instincts in humans and other animals...
, became better known when it was later espoused and renamed by Coppens as the "East Side Story".
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, zoologist, Neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist and theorist and a popular science author....
says in
The Ancestor's TaleThe Ancestor's Tale is a 2004 popular science book by Richard Dawkins, with contributions from Dawkins' research assistant Yan Wong. It follows the path of humans backwards through evolutionary history, meeting humanity's cousins as they converge on common ancestors...
: "In his native France, Yves Coppens is widely cited as the discoverer of
LucyAustralopithecus afarensis is an extinct hominid which lived between 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago. A. afarensis was slenderly built, like the younger Australopithecus africanus. It is thought that A. afarensis was ancestral to both the genus Australopithecus and the genus Homo, which includes the...
, even as the "father" of Lucy. In the English-speaking World, this important discovery is attributed to
Donald JohansonDonald Carl Johanson is an American paleoanthropologist. Along with Maurice Taieb, and Yves Coppens he is known for the discovery of the skeleton of the female hominid australopithecine known as "Lucy", in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia.-Early years:Johanson was born in Chicago,...
."
The
asteroidthumb|260px|right|[[253 Mathilde]], a [[C-type asteroid]] measuring about across. Photograph taken in 1997 by the [[NEAR Shoemaker]] probe.Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets or planetoids, are small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun, especially in the inner Solar System; they are...
172850 Coppens is named in his honour.
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