Lucy’s West Coast premiere: If you’ve ever been irked by someone telling you to stand up straight, now you know who to blame: Lucy.

She belongs to a species called Australopithecus afarensis, the earliest known bipeds related to humankind. Her fossilized skeleton will be on display starting today at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. The exhibit, “Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia,” also includes dozens of artifacts from past millennia, including silver jewelry, ornate Christian crosses, leather-bound Qurans and crude tools.

But the star is Lucy, an incomplete hominid skeleton. At 3.2 million years old, her skeleton is among the oldest, most complete, and best-preserved among hominids, those upright-walking ancestors to humankind.

The exhibit, which has never appeared before on the West Coast, will be on display in Seattle today through March 8.

Tickets to the exhibit are $20.75 for adults ages 13 to 64, and are less expensive for seniors, youth and museum members. For full information, including a handful of dates when the exhibit will be closed to the public, call 877-733-5829 or go to www.pacsci.org/lucy.

And to read a full preview of “Lucy’s Legacy,” pick up the Herald’s Oct. 10 A&E section.

Andy Rathbun, Herald Writer, arathbun@heraldnet.com, 425-339-3455