Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Added later: The Hairy Museum of Natural History has more on the story, including links to more pictures and a better phylogeny...
It is actually considered to be a symmetrodont, more specifically it is a spalacotheroid. You can go for some earlier finds and background. Below is a picture of the fossil itself:
And here is how it fits into mammalian evolution:
From the Carnegie Museum Press Release:
After the extinction of dinosaurs and in the Cenozoic (65 million years to Present) or Ages of Mammals, a large number of mammal groups initially evolved in Asia and then migrated to North America, a broad geographic pattern discovered by Dr. Chris Beard of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Akidolestes and its immediate fossil relatives all belong to an extinct mammalian family of spalacotheroids, in which the more primitive and older species were all Asiatic and the advanced and younger species are all North American. Dr. Zhe-Xi Luo notes: "Now we have some tantalizing evidence that the prevalent dispersal of mammals from Asia to North America during the Early Cenozoic may have had a longer history going back to Cretaceous."
Comments
Thanks for the tip on this one!
Here's the Nature abstract; they've got some good figures available.
Looks like you're starting off strong on the new site...keep up the great work!
Posted by: Hairy Museum Matt | January 12, 2006 12:43 AM
Thanks!
Posted by: afarensis | January 12, 2006 8:00 PM