The genius of trees: how forests have shaped humanity, from chocolate cravings to our ability to dream

"One day, high up in the canopy, she slipped. She fell more than 40ft (12 metres) and hit the ground at more than 35mph (55km/h), feet first, then fell forwards on to her outstretched arms. The impact was too much, and her legs and pelvis shattered, as well as her arms and ribs. There was no medical help, and she died from her injuries in a couple of hours."

"By 2016, Lucy One, as she was called, was an icon, and made a posthumous tour of American museums from her base in the museum in Addis Ababa. Scientists used an MRI machine to scan her bones, and reconstructed the breaks in them with the help of a trauma pathologist. They found that Lucy had complex compression fractures in her larger bones, and the smaller ones had broken in the greenstick manner, a half break, half-split often recorded in pathologist's reports"

A young tree-dwelling hominin foraged fruits, nuts, grasses, leaves, tubers, and roots while moving through grass trails and the broad crowns of trees, balancing and springing along boughs. One day she slipped high in the canopy and fell over 40 feet, striking feet first and then outstretched arms; the impact shattered legs, pelvis, arms, and ribs, and she died within hours without medical help. Three million years later in Ethiopia her fossilised remains were retrieved and became known as Lucy One. MRI scans and trauma-pathologist reconstruction showed complex compression fractures in larger bones and greenstick breaks in smaller bones.

Read at www.theguardian.com