- Yves Coppens
Yves Coppens (born
1934 ) is a French anthropologist. He has studied ancient hominids and has had multiple published works on this topic, and has also produced a film.Coppens is one of the co-discoverers of Lucy. The "
Rift Valley theory ", proposed and supported by the Dutch primatologistAdriaan Kortlandt [Kortlandt, A. (1972) - "New perspectives on ape and human evolution", Amsterdam, Stichting voor Psychobiologie.] , became better known when it was later espoused and renamed by Coppens as the "East Side Story".Richard Dawkins says in "The Ancestor's Tale ": "In his native France, Yves Coppens is widely cited as the discoverer of Lucy, even as the "father" of Lucy. In the English-speaking World, this important discovery is attributed toDonald Johanson ." [citebook|title=The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution |author= Richard Dawkins|year= 2004|publisher=Mariner Books| pages=104|id=ISBN 061861916X |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=ZicUataX4G0C&pg=PA104&ots=Ai3eXnKM4p&dq=%22Yves+Coppens%22&as_brr=3&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html&sig=eAtwcTGzHwZARXVkc6uvX_wXOrU]The
asteroid 172850 Coppens is named in his honour.References
External links
* [http://lexnews.free.fr/sciences.htm Lexnews Magazine interview with Yves Coppens (in French)]
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