Bait

Hi Oolon,

>>>Hi Ron. Thanks for so honest an answer about the skulls. I’ve chopped the ordering of your post around a bit for clarity, hope you >>don’t mind.

Don't mind, go fer it.

quote:
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It's difficult to determine ape from human skulls without seeing the size (as an example), and having a closer look at teeth, etc.
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>>>Why might that be, I wonder...? See, with evolution, we’d expect things that shared a recent common ancestor to be similar. Why might god make the pinnacle of his creation so very ape-like?

Why not? I admitted it is hard to determine sometimes without closer inspection.


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However, at first blush it appears that A. looks a bit like a Gibbon
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>>>(A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern

Here’s a gibbon:

and another, teeth incomplete but fully lateral:

Here’s another A:

A is in fact Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern

>>>Ooh, it’s sooo tempting to mention your expertise in chimps...

Yea, but I was correct in that it was not human, but ape. You didn't give the the more recent pic's of Gibbon (like you did here).


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B. could be australopithecus..it has the general shape anyway
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>>Correct! But which species? B is Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 Myo.

2 down (means I know at least a little at least? I think I'm doing good for me not being around the apes since my early 20's).


quote:
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Actually one could argue the entire top row (A - F)each having brow lines similar to apes, but I cannot tell for sure from these pictures.
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G. is also probably ape.
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>>G is Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 yrs. It has a cranial capacity of 1300cc.

Ok, size is good for humans. Like I said, it's hard to tell without the size.

quote:
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I. one can see the incisors, so I would guess it to be ape as well, though other features seem to indicate human.
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I is Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 yrs

I couldn't tell from the picture...I thought I saw some large incisors. From what I've read Neansderthal had rather normal (for humans)sized incisors. This is an honest question because the only reason I put that one into the ape class was because of the incisor.


quote:
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J. the skull indicates a u-shaped dental arcade, which would also indicate an ape., perhaps a baby chimp (without an indication of size).
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>>J is Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 yrs. Incidentally, that’s actually a very astute suggestion, about it being a juvenile, because in numerous ways we humans are neotenous (retaining juvenile characteristics into adulthood) apes. Developmentally, neoteny was one of the main mechanisms of our evolution -- explaining our relative hairlessness, skull-spine angle, brain to body size, learning abilities, late maturation, etc etc.

Thank you (I think??)


quote:
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The rest are probably human
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>>H is Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 yrs

>>K is Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 yrs

2 more down (correct)


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but L definately is human.
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>>>L is Homo sapiens sapiens, modern.

and another


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You'll probably come back now and tell me they are all human though (trick question?)
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>>Yep, trick question. They’re all apes.

Nope, about half human, half ape (dependant on your view) [/CODE]


quote:
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How'd I do???
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>>>You tell me... Maybe you’d like to take a look at Jesse’s first post in the archived Creationist confusion over hominid classification thread.

Ok, I'll look at it. Looks like I did fair based on the pictures I was given. Maybe I have at least a little credibility???


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In general (never 100%) the average cranial capacity of a modern human skull is about 1,350cc for women, 1,500 cc. for men with a range of 830 cc to 2800 cc. Modern ape, as an example has an average cranial capacity of about 500 - 550 cc, with gorilla's having as much as 700cc and chimps as little as 300 - 400 cc.
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>>Okay... so far I’ve only been able to check some of these particular specimens, but the results so far are:

>>B has a cranial capacity of 485cc
(ape)

>>>C has a cranial capacity of 428cc
(ape)
>>>D has a cranial capacity of 510cc
(ape)

>>>E has a cranial capacity of 600cc -- in a chimp-sized creature.
(ape)

>>>Not among those pictures (which are a simple illustration of the absence of obvious missing links, not to indicate a direct ancestor-descendant line, nor a full selection of the fossils -- far from it!) is Homo erectus. This was around from about 1.6 million years ago to c.60,000 -- that’s from F to H -- and had cranial capacities from about 900 cc in early specimens >>to 1050 cc in later ones.

900cc is well within the range of "human" or homo erectus. I agree with you here, these would be humans.

>>G has a cranial capacity of 1300cc

I had that one correct...so no dispute.


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I cannot tell from the pictures the size of the cranial skulls, which puts me at a disadvantage.
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>>>Sorry about that. It’s not my picture, just a handy single image to post!

No problem, but it was the reason for some of my errors.

>>>[Edited to add: thinking about that further though, that's the point. It's not to disadvantage anyone, but to make them concentrate on the shapes, not other factors.]

Shape alone is not an indication. You could do the same with many different animals. Size, however, along with the shape does matter, as does the shape of the teeth. I had a hard time seeing the shape of the dentals in the pic's you gave (maybe my poor eyesight).


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But to determine ape from human (in general):
Men have (in general) small brow ridges, dome shaped skulls, eye sockets are broad and spaced far apart, and parabolic dental arcade (u-shaped for apes). Apes usually ahve large ridge lines, ridged skulls, smaller, closer spaced eye sockets, and u-shaped dental arcades with prominent incisors.
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>>>Sounds reasonable. The above was just a rough demonstration from one series of pictures. Time for you to have a thorough browse round the Smithsonian’s Hall of Human Ancestors, and TalkOrigins’s Fossil Hominids pages.

>>If we were classifying any other mammal, there would be no choice but to group Homo sapiens in with Pan and Gorilla. Some systematicists already do so.

Yes, and no. (Not really disagreeing with you...kinda a fuzzy area when it comes to classifying) I agree some do, but humans are the only ones with spines that allow an erect posture (as an example), and has the large cranial capacity. In general, "ape like" I would agree, but there are also many differences that put us in a class of our own.


>>To alter the perspective a little and bring in genetics...

>>>You accept, I take it, that the patterns in DNA are copied down generations, even potentially into separated lineages, yes?

Yes.

>>>Perhaps, then, you can explain why we share several mutations in otherwise identical non-functional DNA with the other great apes?

>>(clipped about the scurvy) The chances of this being the case by accident are phenomenal.

Not really, no more phenomenal than some microbiological creatures eating up all of the chemicals that originally created ... um, formed them in the first place. (Sorry I couldn't resist...not often I can get my own dig in) [/CODE]

Actually you are citing a case that is potentially a characteristic of common location, not ancestor(hinted by you own argument below). We also have characteristics with many other animals not related to us at all. Perhaps that is because the basics of life are all approximately the same.

If we shared a common ancestor, one which had enough vitamin C in its diet (fruit and veg, yeah?), then a mutation in that ancestor that disabled the vit C synthesising machinery would not be a disadvantage. If that ancestral lineage later split, the (now pseudo-) gene would be carried down into the descendants, ultimately into the separate species.

Or because both humans and apes can eat meat and veggies...we both developed the same mutations, while lion family (as an example, being only meat eaters)needed the gene for vitamine c. (this is one of those circular arguments...chicken and egg)
Truth is, I don't know why.

>>>However, if we were designed, is scurvy not an odd thing for the creator to condemn us to... and more to the point, why design the great apes that way too?

Why would nature do such a thing?


Like I said, don't know, perhaps when we (and the apes) were designed, we were intended to live in a vitamin rich environment. We muffed up, and moved out...the apes stayed. We get scurvy, they don't.
[code] </pre>[/quote]

Good argument, enjoyed it. BTW, John and Patrick has gone to another part of the forum...I think I'll try both of these for a while. I may learn something on the geology one...John promises to beat me up good.
[code] </pre>[/quote]

On another note, I have several dragons & dino's for your comparison (as you requested), but cannot figure out how to post them. They are gif's and Jpeg's (about 25 of them). I finally figured out the graemlins (I think)...Any suggestions?

Bests,
Ron

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Bait ]</p>

Bait

Hello Hezekiahjones,
The citation of the textbook states that something is a "fact"...as in it's been "proven". Do I really have to go to the dictionary and quote what the words "fact" and "proof" mean? You cannot "prove" anything without "fact" and it cannot be a fact without it first being "proven". <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> [code] </pre>[/quote]
Ron

Originally posted by hezekiahjones:

So where does the word "prove" appear in your citation from the textbook?

If you're trying to prove a contradiction between what Oolon has been telling you and what you've found in the textbook, at least the terminology should be parallel, don't you think? Otherwise, your citation simply makes Oolon's point.[/qb][/QUOTE]

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Bait ]</p>

Coragyps

Ron, I don't think you are paying attention. "Nature" doesn't "do" things.

The mutation which broke our cellular machinery for making our own vitamin C just happened! All it did was happen! Some proto-ape was born without the ability to make vitamin C. She ate enough fruit to not get scurvy. For whatever reason, her offspring, with the same broken gene, happened to be the family that gave rise to you, me, Oolon, the gorillas, the chimps, and the orang utans that are around today. But it just happened! No intent was involved on Ma Nature's part, on the proto-ape's part, on the Designer's part, not nobody's.
Do yourself a favor, and read some of Stephen J Gould's essays on evolution. His pre-1990 stuff, in particular, is accessible and available.

hezekiah jones

No, that's not what it stated. You appear to be inserting the word "proven" for your own convenience. It doesn't appear in your citation, which stated:

[Emphasis mine.]

I don't see the word "proof" in there. I see the words "fact," "hypothesis," and "true." It's important to be very careful with these words, particularly in these types of discussions. It seems that most creationists misuse them to a great degree. This is a general problem in the dialogue (such as it is) and belies the creationist misunderstanding of the most elementary concepts of logic.

Maybe so, but I thought Oolon already explained it several times in this thread. If you do consult a dictionary, a dictionary of philosophy would be preferable, in this case. While you're at it, look up "scientific explanation" and see what Carl Hempel and the boys have to say about it.

Proofs can be just as easily constructed using false premises. Even contradictory premises. Proof is for logic. Science is tentative.

Why bang your head? It can't be that difficult to understand.

[P.S. You needn't reply to this. I don't want to distract from the rest of the thread. Check out that dictionary though.]

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: hezekiahjones ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Hi Ron

Question side-stepped. ‘God can do what he likes’ doesn’t answer the question -- it avoids any further enquiry whatsoever. According to creation we are god’s special creatures. So it is reasonable to expect us to be set apart from apes... not in some editions practically indistinguishable from them. And that’s just skeletal, not looking at biochemistry, genetics, physiology...

Because that’s how god wanted it. Hmm.

Q: Why do the females-only, parthenogenic whiptail lizards Cnemidophorus pseudo-copulate with each other, and why does it increase fertility?’
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why does the recurrent laryngeal nerve loop down under the aorta on its route from one side of the neck to the other, adding in giraffes another fifteen feet to its length?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why do all gastropod larvae twist their bodies, and why always anticlockwise? Why do slugs (subclass Pulmonata) and sea slugs (subclass Opisthobranchia) then do an untwist and straighten their bodies out again?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why do humans get impacted wisdom teeth?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why do sea turtles have to come onto land to lay their eggs?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why do guinea pigs have tails so short they don’t extend outside their bodies?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why do guinea pigs have tails so short they don’t extend outside their bodies?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why does 95% of our DNA not do anything? Why are there millions and millions of repeats of tiny nonsense pieces?
A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Q: Why do flightless beetles have wings? Why do cave-dwelling creatures have eyes that don’t work? Why are marsupials (almost) only found in Australasia? Why are lemurs confined to Magagascar? Why do birds have genes for making teeth? Why is the same framework of bones used to construct forelimbs as varied as a dolphin’s flipper, a bat’s wing, a mole’s front ‘shovels’, a tiger’s paw and a man’s hand?
Why do giraffes have the same number of neck bones as elephants, whales and hamsters? Why do only New World monkeys have prehensile tails?
Why are there mongoose-cats (fossas), reptile-dolphins (ichthyosaurs) and marsupial wolves (thylacines), when there are cats, dolphins and wolves? Why do only bony fish have swim bladders? Why does the male bean weevil Callosobruchus maculates have a “monstrous spine-covered penis that lacerates the insides of the female during sex” (New Scientist, 21 Oct 2000)? Why can there be
mules and tigons, but not the tragelaphs or camelopards? Why do we humans have our own specific species of flea (Pulex irritans) and louse (Pediculus humanus)? Why do the mitochondria that provide all our cells with energy have their own separate genome -- and why is it so similar to that of Rickettsia prowazekii bacteria? Why are humans the only reservoir for R prowazekii, and why does something that relies on us for its existence cause epidemic typhus, which has killed millions upon millions of people?

A: Because that’s how god wanted it.

Your answer is no answer at all. D minus. Must try harder.

Why would I? The point was to compare it to the fossil skulls. Yes it’s an ape. But a chimp, which you’re supposed to know about, and not much like a gibbon.

So what do you think an Australopithecines were?






Size wasn’t the issue, proportions were. You thought it looked like an ape. Yet it has human-range cranial volume.

I agree it’s not overly clear, but that one tooth would be all the difference? And the ‘tooth’ in question would be a canine, not an incisor. Actually, it’s part of the skull:



I know you couldn’t know that, but you could know the difference. It’s canines that are the most prominent (literally) part of most ape dentition, except ours.


Take another look at the picture above. Doesn’t that A Africanus arcade look more like the human one than the gorilla? Yes it’s still a U, but the only change required is to widen the ‘legs’ of the U a bit, no?

Definitely.

Yep, but the last was pretty obvious.

So tell me... If humans and apes are different kinds (still to be defined), just what are the drastic differences between the two? Why are you so sure?

Correct again! I’d say that D especially is half ape, half human.

Can’t begrudge you it! Though your criteria will lead you into difficulty...

But erectus has a U-shaped dental arcade, as you can see above, and the facial shape is well in with those you were calling ape.

Huh? You said:

So, ape or human?

Huh again? I can understand the canine, but the point was proportions of shape, not relative size...

They are all broadly the same size. Some aren’t marmosets and others gorillas, they are all roughly human or chimp sized. How about these:





Does knowing that these are different sized creatures make any difference to comparing their similarities and differences? They are both the same species, by the way. And the changes have been wrought by selection.

But then there’s ‘Lucy’. She’s an Australopithecus afarensis from about 3.2 mya, and her pelvis, femur and tibia show her to have been bipedal. What’s more, her humerofemoral ratio, or length of humerus divided by length of femur, is 84.6 for Lucy, compared to 71.8 for humans, and 97.8 and 101.6 for the two species of chimpanzee (all these figures have a standard deviation of between 2.0 and 3.0). In other words, humans have much shorter arms compared to their legs than chimpanzees do, and Lucy falls roughly in the middle. Yet she looks like the first few fossils in the picture. Here’s a composite afarensis upper dentition:



... which we see increasing in the fossil record, as expected.

Nope, not even genus of our own. Of course there’s differences -- we’re different species. But the biological differences are subtle.

Would that be funny if I understood it?

Sorry, more reading I’m afraid, but you need to read this: <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molecular-genetics.html" target="_blank">Plagiarized Errors and molecular Genetics</a>. There’s millions of places in the genome that a mutation could creep in. The chances of the same mutation occurring in the same place separately in separate species is calculable. I expect theyeti can give us better info, but here’s a rough guide: there’s about 3 billion base pairs in the human genome, and the same with chimps and gorillas. The probability of a random change in a particular place is therefore one in 3 billion. The probability of it in both us and chimps is therefore 1 / 3 billion x 1 / 3 billion. If gorillas are a different kind too, then it’s 1 / 3 billion x 1 / 3 billion x 1 / 3 billion. Now, I suspect that this depends on the frequency of mutations (and thus number of generations), but even so, I don’t think it shortens the odds to anything like those of the lottery. There’s a mere 250,000 generations separating us from our common ancestor (assuming an average breeding at age 20, and a generous 5my).

Bingo! Yep, some stuff, especially biochemical systems, is fairly standard, because it worked in the shared ancestor.

Which is vastly unlikely. And mutations don’t ‘develop’, they occur randomly. This isn’t something like aquatic streamlining, found in a wide range of things in similar environments; it’s a potentially harmful random mutation that isn’t harmful because of diet.

Fair enough. I’m suggesting a simple answer. On what grounds are you so sure it’s wrong?

Nature doesn’t do anything.

Nope. If we’re designed for a vit C rich environment, we wouldn’t need, and so wouldn’t have, the gene at all, not have a broken one.

Correct. The vitamin rich environment in question was late Miocene-early Pliocene forests, and at the time ‘we’ looked like the first skulls above.

Oh, your off then. I thought we still had some ground to cover: your early ‘radiometric guesswork’ claim; crucially, defining kinds; and responses to the above, for starters.

I’m afraid they’ll bury you. One tip: get them to put it into layman’s language! ( but also <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> to Patrick and John)

Not me, it was Ipetrich.

What you do is, insert the url of the pic (the actual pic, not the page it’s on – right click it and get it from ‘properties’, if you’re using Windows) like this:
{img}Full URL, and no spaces between it and the brackets{/img}, replacing { } with [ ].

Another tip: if you’re doing this in a WP and cut ‘n’ pasting it into the message box (which is the easiest way to do long stuff), you can type
{quote} the bit your’re quoting {/quote}
using square brackets, and it’ll come out like mine above. Makes it easier for us all to track where quotes end and your stuff begins. Same goes for {b} {/b} and {i} {/i} for bold and italics.

Cheers and looking forward to seeing your responses soon.

Oolon

[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]

[ March 01, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Kosh

Great post Oolon. Your knowlege of this stuff
is simply .... inhuman.

MrDarwin

Continuing in this same vein, one also has to wonder why there are so many obligatory parasites, and (a) why they are nearly always host-specific, (b) why most hosts have their own suite of unique parasites, and (c) why the phylogeny of the parasites matches the phylogeny of their hosts; i.e., parasites that are thought to be closely related tend to parasitize hosts that are also thought to be closely related based on completely independent criteria.

For example, <a href="http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/courses/245_01/monkpara.gif" target="_blank">pinworms</a>. The closest relatives of the pinworms that are parasitic on humans are found among the great apes. Coincidence? But it's not just in humans and related primates. This is a pattern that is seen throughout the animal kingdom:

<a href="http://www.rannala.org/papers/evol1997.pdf" target="_blank">Gophers and their lice</a> (PDF)

<a href="http://tolweb.org/tree/eukaryotes/animals/arthropoda/hexapoda/phthiraptera/accessory/cospeciation.html" target="_blank">More about gophers and their lice </a>

<a href="http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~vsmith/index_rco.html" target="_blank">Louse phylogeny and relationships</a>

<a href="http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rdmp1c/sa/cospeciation.html#johnson" target="_blank">Doves and their feather lice</a>

[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

But it's obvious, Mr D. It's because that's how god wanted it.

Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

I said:

Just an addendum/erratum: I got myself confused as to which pics I was posting (only allowed 8 per post, inc smilies), and so the ‘one above’ I referred to wasn’t there.

So, here is a reconstruction of Homo erectus (see <a href="http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/weid2.htm" target="_blank">here</a> for more details on it):



and here’s it’s upper palate:



Edited to add: these are the creatures with, even in their early specimens, a cranial capacity of about 900cc, about which you said: "900cc is well within the range of 'human' or homo erectus. I agree with you here, these would be humans".

Thoughts, Ron?

[ March 01, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Bait

Hi Coragyps,
But that I don't agree with. I don't think things "just happen" even if you leave God out of it. Nature has a way of evening things out. What I mean by that is that if something is not necessary (for survival) it usually fades away. If it is needed, then either the "animal" gets it through adaption...or if it is absolutely necessary, and it doesn't adapt...it goes extinct. That's what natural selection is after all...isn't it? The lack of vitamine c broken gene was because it was not needed. Not just by chance it just happened...IMHO.
Ron