'Lucy' Fossil Coming to Times Square

The framed hominid fossil "Lucy," is seen at a exhibition at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006. The 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton has left Ethiopia for a tour of the United States _ a trip that some say is simply too risky for one of the world's most famous fossils. Credit: AP Photo/Les Neuhaus

"Lucy" is the one early human fossil that some non-science types might know of. The original 3.2 million-year-old fossil has been on display in Houston and Seattle as part of a U.S. tour, and now she is hitting Times Square starting later this month.

Lucy, sometimes called "the first human," will be on public display for five months, starting June 24, at the Discovery Times Square Exposition™, a new exhibition facility located in the former printing presses building of The New York Times at 226 W. 44th St.

"Over the past decade, wondrous exhibitions traveling the United States have bypassed New York time and again simply because no venue existed to host them," James Sanna, president and executive producer of Running Subway Productions, said in a prepared statement. Running Subway is helping to host the show. The organization also put on "Bodies: The Exhibition" at the South Street Seaport.

There are potentially a few NYC metro-area venues where traveling exhibitions might visit, such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Javits Center, the New York Hall of Science in Queens, and the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey.

"Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia" will be one of the two first exhibitions at the Discovery Times Square Exposition opening on June 24, a Running Subway spokeswoman said. The other exhibition opening that day is "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition."

"Lucy's Legacy" is organized by the Houston Museum of Natural Science in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Exhibition Coordinating Committee.

Nearly 170,000 people visited the exhibition in Houston between August 2007 and September 2008, said Joel A. Bartsch, president of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and about 100,000 people visited it in Seattle at the Pacific Science Center from October 2008 to March 2009, according to The New York Times. The show lost money there, according to the newspaper.