If you happen to make one of the definitive discoveries in human history, be prepared to spend the rest of your life in the limelight. Just ask Don Johanson, who went from promising paleoanthropologist to celebrity overnight after unearthing “Lucy,” a now iconic 3.2 million-year-old fossilized skeleton that changed our perception of the human trajectory. 

More than three decades after that astounding find, Johanson is still an in-demand speaker and interview subject. The founding director of Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins and a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Johanson was recently interviewed by TIME’s Lauren E. Bohn. In the interview, which appears on the TIME Health & Science site, Johanson discusses the significance of Lucy, the field of evolutionary study and his latest book.

 

Released this month, Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins is something of a sequel to Johanson’s bestselling Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.

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