Donald Johanson
Donald Johanson
Donald Carl Johansonis an American paleoanthropologist. He is known for discovering the fossil of a female hominin australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth28 June 1943
CountryUnited States of America
Donald Johanson quotes about
strong dedication goal
Most Achievers I Know Are People Who Have Made A Strong And Deep Dedication to Pursuing A Particular Goal. That Dedication Took A Tremendous Amount Of Effort.
lost-friendship close-friends difficult
There have been some friendships lost over this. That's the most difficult for me. I find it very uncomfortable to know that I was at one time close friends with someone, and because of jealousies and misunderstandings and so on, these friendships have dissolved.
opportunity numbers midwest
As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest.
real father years
My real father died when I was two years old, so I never knew him. He was a barber in Chicago.
scientist proven proven-wrong
Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong.
thinking discovery ideas
I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.
ideas years excited
But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures.
hands skeletons legs
Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.
hands skulls body
Normally, we are happy to find a fragment of jaw, a few isolated teeth, a bit of an arm, a bit of a skull. But to find associated body parts is extremely rare.
commitment successful pursuit
One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it.
years choices fossils
When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.
art unique animal
Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are very unique creatures. As the Dobzhansky said, all animals are unique; humans are the uniquest. And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture for survival, comes from the combination of traditional biological evolution.
want initiative achieve
One has to take initiative in life to achieve what he or she wants.
asking-the-right-questions answers facts
And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.