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robustus and to Homo habilis, a branch that led to Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. But the position that Johanson and White now adopted was that Australopithecus afarensis was the common ancestor to later australopithecines and to Homo, spanning a period between 4 and 3 million years ago. Australopithecus africanus was relegated to an intermediate stage in the doomed australopithecine line. At about 3 million years, according to Johanson and White, the human line began to emerge. By 2 million years, it had become recognisable as Homo. For about a million years, Homo and australopithecines had lived side by side. By 1 million years ago, there were no australopithecines left. They had all become extinct.

Needing a type specimen for Australopithecus afarensis—the reference model for the species by which all others must be judged—Johanson and White chose a fossil not from the Hadar collection but from one of Mary Leakey’s much smaller group of fossils—part of a lower jaw known as LH-4 (Laetoli hominid 4). With Mary Leakey’s approval, White had previously published a meticulous description of the Laetoli fossils, leaving out any comment about their affinities. But now LH-4 was assigned as the ‘name-bearer’ of the new species. The advantage to Johanson and White was that it enabled them to claim an older date for Australopithecus afarensis—half a million years older—than otherwise would have been the case if they had confined their analysis to the Hadar fossils; the Laetoli fossils had already gained fame as the world’s oldest hominids. The choice of LH-4 also meant that Mary Leakey’s Laetoli fossils—which she had not yet named—would henceforth become known as Australopithecus afarensis.

Johanson assumed that Mary Leakey would be pleased with this arrangement and hoped to be able to persuade her to lend her name to an article that he planned to write in conjunction with Tim White and Yves Coppens, the French co-leader of the Afar Expedition. From the outset, however, Mary Leakey made clear her objection in the first place to the term Australopithecus. In answer to a letter from Johanson in December 1977, she wrote: ‘I do not think Australopithecus is correct. It is a lousy term, based on a juvenile [the Taung child from South Africa] for which there is doubt as to whether it is A. africanus or A. robustus. Nor is it a direct ancestor of Homo, as all of us people agree’.

During a lecture tour of the United States in February 1978, Mary met White at his office in the anthropology department at Berkeley, once again stating her objection to the use of the term Australopithecus . She also spoke on the phone to Johanson. ‘I said I didn’t think the Laetoli specimens were Australopithecus’, she recalled. ‘I objected to the term. That has been consistently my view’.

Johanson and White nevertheless proceeded to draft a ‘naming’ paper for publication, describing Australopithecus afarensis as a new species and using LH-4 as the type specimen. Johanson also made plans to make a public announcement.

The occasion he chose was a Nobel Symposium in Stockholm in May 1978, a six-day event organised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as part of national celebrations commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus. As the son of Swedish emigrants, Johanson felt particular pride in being invited to speak at such a grand affair.

It was an event to which Mary Leakey had also been invited as a special guest of honour. She was due to be presented with the Golden Linnaen Medal by Sweden’s King Gustav in acknowledgment of her contributions to biological sciences—the first woman ever to receive the award.

During the scientific discussions, it fell to Johanson to deliver his lecture in advance of Mary Leakey. While Mary sat listening in the audience, much to her fury Johanson dwelt not just on the Hadar discoveries but on the Laetoli fossils that were the result of her own work and about which she was due to speak next after a coffee break. At least half of his lecture was devoted to Laetoli. During the