1. Some researchers see the australopithecine mouth as sculpted for munching small, hard objects such as seeds.

2. Least developed in the gorilla but greater in chimpanzees and australopithecines, with formation of incisive canal.

3. Once he does, however, he will be able to reconstruct nearly the entire body of an A. afarensis three-year-old—and begin to understand what growing up australopithecine was all about.

4. "Wow!" says Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University and author of the book, Skin: A Natural History. "The possibility of preserved australopithecine skin is massively cool."

5. And that, says Strait, suggests that simplistic ideas about australopithecine diets, based on tooth and jaw size, and why they went extinct, need to be reevaluated.

6. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.