Paleontologist, Yves Coppens, who is known for discovering fossils of the famous hominid skeleton Lucy, died on Wednesday after fighting an illness. He was 87 years old.

Coppens, who was born on August 9, 1943 in Vannes, France, dedicated his life to unravelling the mystery of human origin.

And 45 years ago, he stumbled upon a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton in southern Ethiopia that changed our understanding of human evolution – Lucy showed our human ancestors were walking upright much earlier than previously believed.

Those who know Coppen personally say he was a smiley individual with a great sense of humor that was sometimes provocative, and he always professed his confidence in the future of man.

Odile Jacob shared: '#Yves Coppens left us this morning. My sadness is immense. Yves Coppens was a very great scientist, a world-renowned paleontologist, a member of countless foreign institutions, but above all a professor at the Collège de France and a member of the Academy of Sciences.

'His benevolence, his kindness, his humor, his loyalty, his erudition were matched only by his talent as a writer, storyteller, essayist. I lose the friend who entrusted me with all his work @0dileJacob France loses one of its great men. I will never forget him,' the tweet continued. 

Coppen, who is of Italian decent, was born to a nuclear physicist, but knew he wanted to be an archeologist at the age of seven or eight, he told AFP in a 2016 interview.