Kosh

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> That's gonna leave a scar...

Oolon Colluphid

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

That was a monster post! Many thanks Deb. I thought I could tackle that on my own, but I now realise just how effective it is to have an expert or two on hand!

Cheers, Oolon

Ergaster

Why, thank you, Oolon (and Kosh, and Coragyps...).

Now, if only I could learn how to do that impressive picture thing you do....

Kosh

Uh, Ron? Are you OK?

Bait

.Hello Deb,

Sorry it took so long getting back, my server has been down for a while. I don’t mind at all you replying for Oolon, I welcome your input. So here goes:
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Originally posted by Bait:
Hmmmm, so even the one who DISCOVERED Lucy, Mary Leakey, thinks that Lucy is not our ancestor to such an extent that she wanted her name REMOVED from a scientific paper that supposedly provides earth shattering evidence of the missing link. Nobel prize stuff. Kind of strange is it not…could it be possible that she thought Johanson had his Own agenda…and the paper was not the truth?
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Deb: Mary Leakey did NOT discover "Lucy". I have no idea where you might have gotten this notion from. An expedition that included Donald Johanson, Tim White, and Yves Coppens discovered the fossil called "Lucy" at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia in 1974

Bait reply: My mistake, you are correct. Mary Leakey found the footprints…but not Lucy. I apparently got the two mixed up when I wrote the response to Oolon. Sorry. In fact, I ALSO acknowledge the knee was found by Dr. Johanson as well, at a different strata.

Deb: Furthermore, Mary Leakey wanted her name removed from the Kirtlandia paper NOT because she didn't think that "Lucy" was an ancestor; she wanted it removed because (according to her version) she did not believe that the finds from Laetoli in Kenya were the same thing as the finds from Hadar (including "Lucy"). She was upset because the type specimen for the new species Australopithecus afarensis was one of the juvenile mandibles she found at Laetoli.


Bait reply: Exactly my point, She believed Johanson was not being exactly honest in his paper and findings, so she did not want her name attached to it. She did not believe that
Australopithecus was one of our ancestors…according to what Johanson himself wrote about her, she thought that we are only descended from Homo species.

Deb: I say "according to her version" because Johanson and White insist that she had accepted that Australopithecus was the most reasonable genus to which the collected finds from Laetoli and Hadar could be assigned. They were too primitive to be Homo, and erecting a new genus seemed too extreme a step. See Roger Lewin's book Bones of Contention for a fuller version of this controversy.

Bait: They insist that because to admit that a Homo species was found at that layer, would mean that Homo was around much earlier than originally observed and believed. But at Laetoli Homo WAS found in addition to Australopithecus. In particular Homo erectus and Homo habilis, which is rarely mentioned.
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Deb: My first observation
Original Bait post:
The fact is that most of the experts such as Richard Leakey, Timothy White and Donald Johanson agree that afarensis is the ancestor of africanus and robustus, which one, or both are evolutionary dead ends. They disagree however whether afarensis is, or is not, the ancestor of man.
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Deb: Actually, there is no such agreement. While this *might* have been the case 30 years ago, there have been considerable advances in the field since then, both in the number of fossil hominid taxa found and in analytic methodology, so what people believed three decades ago is largely irrelevant in the face of all the new data. Besides, Richard Leakey gave up paleoanthropology a long time ago.

Bait: Yes, and Mary Leakey died in 1996, and your point is??? There is a current debate as to where Afarensis fits in, and whether it is an ancestor to Homo, as I’ll show later.
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Original Bait:
The conclusion of the erect posture of the Lucy skeleton is promoted by Johanson and his associates, who bases his claim based on the shape of the pelvis of the Lucy skeleton, from her tibia, and from a complete knee joint found in a (similar?) skeleton the previous year some 250 feet deeper in the sedimentary strata by THE LEAKEYS.
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Deb: The erect posture of not only "Lucy" but the *entire* A. afarensis hypodigm (I hope you understand that "Lucy" is not the only fossil in that species; in fact, afarensis is one of the *best* represented of the fossil hominids. The species includes hundreds of fossils representing dozens of individuals, and includes some very fine skulls), but also of *all* australopithecine species, has been confirmed over and over and over again, and the fact that australopithecine’s walked upright was accepted well before "Lucy"'s skeleton was ever found.
See: Robinson JT (1972) Early Hominid Posture and Locomotion, University of Chicago Press.
The discovery of "Lucy" confirmed, not that australos were bipeds, but that bipedality preceded encephalization in hominid evolution.


Deb: And the Leakeys had nothing whatsoever to do with the discovery of the knee joint the previous year. Whatever sources you are using seem to be completely confused about who discovered what. The Leakeys never excavated at Hadar. Donald Johanson found the knee joint.
And yes, it is unequivocally bipedal. Only bipeds have an angled knee joint. Chimps of whatever sort most certainly do not...


Bait: I already acknowledged the knee was found by Johanson. However, the fact is, that Johanson found it at a different level than the Lucy skeleton, then used it as evidence of bipedal locomotion of the Lucy find. Yes, I know Lucy was not the only fossil, but she is the most complete. The supposition that australopithecine’s walked upright has never been fully accepted…there has always been controversy on that subject.
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Original Bait:
Ah yes, The famous “fossil footprints” were found by Mary Leakey in Tanzania, hundreds of miles from where Lucy was found in Ethiopia. But some scientists acknowledge that the footprints could have, or probably had been made by a small, true human beings (Homo sapiens or Homo erectus)…probably by children.
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Deb: No. No scientist has *ever* claimed that the footprints "probably had" been made by "true human beings" (assuming that by "human being" you mean Homo sapiens), and you cannot cite any peer-reviewed literature that says so.

Deb: Some paleoanthropologists do think that the footprints show many human-like characteristics, but you should realize that a comparisons to human footprints is NOT a statement that they were MADE by modern humans--I mean, what else did you expect them to be compared to--giraffes? At any rate, a large number of professionals see non-human traits in the prints, as well. In other words, a mix of human and non-human traits. Not exactly unexpected if made by a hominid.....

Bait: Incorrect, see below. And what non-human traits do they see? The ONLY reason anyone has not to attribute these footprints to modern humans (Homo sapiens), is because of the depth of the find. It would put humans in the same time frame as australo’s, which means that the Homo species could NOT have descended from them. Look at the photo’s of the prints…EVERYTHING about them screams Homo sapien.
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Original Bait:
Again, there is NOT enough evidence to link Lucy (or any australopithecus)and the footprints together, in fact, the evidence points AGAINST it.
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Deb: Incorrect. The footprint trail falls within the time frame that Australopithecus is known to have lived in, and is found in the same area as australopithecine fossils. So while it may be difficult to say which specific *species* of australo made the prints (although there aren't that many candidates to choose from 3.8 mya), there is no evidence at all that anything else was around at the time. The assumption that some version of australo made them is a pretty safe bet.

Bait: Actually you’re incorrect. It is NOT a safe bet. You ignore altogether what else was found near the footprints, AND you (and many others) seem to ignore what the footprints looked like, and that the smaller footprints tried to stay within the larger one’s. You also ignore the statements I provided, although they were saying how they looked like Homo footprints. No they did not say that they WERE Homo footprints, but they did not say they were not either. It appears that there was one set of larger prints, of a Homo species, estimated at around 5 feet tall. Inside his steps, there appears to be footprints of a smaller version trying to step within the larger steps. The third set is one smaller still. All of the prints look like human footprints. The ONLY reason they are attributed to Australopithecus is because they appear at the same level as Australopithecus bones were found...period. In fact, how the footprints were attributed to Australopithecus was described as follows:
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Quote:
We even had a set of footprints. Owen called the famous footprint trail discovered in 1978 by Mary Leakey’s team at Laetoli, Tanzania, the “perfect cementing evidence” for bipedalism [walking upright on two feet]. In a trail of ash that has been dated to 3.5 million years ago, the tracks of two hominids were captured for a distance of nearly eighty feet, lasting impressions that give us a direct glimpse of how they got around.
I believe that afarensis made the footprints--first because afarensis fossils have been found at Laetoli, and second, because a composite foot, made from fossil bones belonging to Homo from nearby Olduvai Gorge combined with Hadar toe bones, has been shown to fit the Laetoli prints. When a chimpanzee walks on two legs, it leaves a print with the big toe splayed away from the rest of the foot. The Laetoli prints resemble modern human footprints, with the big toe in line with the other toes.”
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Bait: So Johanson took a Homo foot, found in a different location, added the TOE bones of afarensis to it, and then fitted it to the footprints, then he BELIEVED they just HAD to be Afarensis…but not the Homo species he had added the toes to. Do you not see something wrong here? He BELIEVED afarensis made the prints because the prints were found at the same level as afarensis bones and because the TOES seemed to match the prints. Have you seen the prints? You can look at them here:

<a href="http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/laetoli.htm" target="_blank">http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/laetoli.htm</a>
And here: <a href="http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/laetolifoot.html" target="_blank">http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/laetolifoot.html</a>

Do they look like ape prints…or Homo sapiens? Honestly.
What about the Homo erectus and Homo habilis that was also found at that level? Why are they ignored?
What about the stone hut that was found…the same kind used by African tribes even today?
Reference:
A. J. Kelso, Physical Antropology, 1st ed., New York: J. B. Lipincott Co., 1970, p. 221; M. D. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge,
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Bait original:
Tim White:
Ref. Donald C. Johanson & M. A. Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981, p. 250.
“Make no mistake about it,... They are like modern human footprints. If one were left in the sand of a California beach today, and a four-year old were asked what it was, he would instantly say that somebody had walked there. He wouldn't be able to tell it from a hundred other prints on the beach, nor would you”
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Deb: No, White is NOT saying that modern humans made the prints, he is saying that in his opinion, they LOOK like the kinds of prints that humans make. In other words, that the maker of the prints and humans probably had similar a foot structure and stride pattern. These days we would conclude that he overstated the case, since (as I mentioned above), closer examination has shown them to be rather less human-like, but not chimp-like (no surprise, since australos were not chimps or modern humans, but australos....)


Bait: Duh…. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> they LOOKED LIKE human prints…but they could not be human prints because the prints were not at the level you would expect to see the prints….is that what you’re saying? Look at the photo’s again…he did NOT overstate his points…he was being HONEST. They LOOKED, and LOOK like human prints…and where is the evidence that they were not? Just because australos fossils were found at the same level? Just because Johanson says so?
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Bait original:
Louis Robbins from North California University made the following comments after examining the footprints, :
Ref. Science News, Vol 115, 1979, pp. 196-197.
“The arch is raised-the smaller individual had a higher arch than I do-and the big toe is large and aligned with the second toe... The toes grip the ground like human toes. You do not see this in other animal forms.”
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Deb: So, like, where is she saying that humans MADE the prints?

Bait: Well, lets see, if they look like human prints, the anatomy of the print appears to have an arch like humans, the toes grip like humans…but that actually means they are really ape….right? Where is she saying an ape made them? Again, the evidence points toward a Homo species making them. Where is the evidence that australos made them? Was not Lucy too small to have made the larger ones? The larger ones are evidence that the (creature)was about 5 feet tall or better, much larger than Lucy.
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Bait original:
Russell Tuttle who examined the footprints wrote:
Ref. Ian Anderson, New Scientist, Vol 98, 1983, p. 373.
“A small barefoot Homo sapiens could have made them... In all discernible morphological features, the feet of the individuals that made the trails are indistinguishable from those of modern humans.”
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Deb: Still having problems distinguishing "looks like" from "was", I see. Similarity does not mean identity, and there is absolutely no other evidence that humans were around. So we can assume that either humans dropped from the sky, walked on this wet ash almost 4 million years ago and then vanished completely from sight for the next three million years...or that whatever made the prints was a bipedal walker with a foot constructed for bipedal walking.

Bait: (sigh) Ok, since you insist: Russell Tuttle also wrote in 1990:
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In sum, the 3.5 million-year-old footprint traits at Laetoli site G resemble those of habitually unshod modern humans. None of their features suggest that the Laetoli hominids were less capable bipeds than we are. If the G footprints were not known to be so old, we would readily conclude that there were made by a member of our genus Homo... In any case, we should shelve the loose assumption that the Laetoli footprints were made by Lucy's kind, Australopithecus afarensis.
Russell H. Tuttle, Natural History, March 1990, pp. 61-64.
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Bait: So the ONLY reason to believe that they are not of our genus Homo, is the age of the prints, and it’s pretty conclusive that Australopithecus afarensis did NOT make them.

Well, lets see, you see something that moves and acts like fire, looks like fire, makes smoke, and burns you if you try to touch it…pretty good evidence that it is probably fire. If it LOOKS like human prints…what evidence is there that they are NOT human prints? Again, just because they are on the wrong level than would be expected? As to no other evidence…you mean besides the fossils of Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and a stone hut? Thought you scientists were supposed to be unbiased. Would not finding prints on a deeper level, by itself indicate humans could maybe have been here a lot longer than you expected, perhaps even prior to australos? Is that not more logical than adding ape toes to a Homo foot…and then comparing the prints and declaring that the prints are from an ape?

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Bait original:
Oolon, the reality is that there were 47 footprints of human children there, 20 of a 10 year old and 27 of one younger in age.
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Deb:
The interpretation is that there were three individuals--two walking abreast and one stepping in the prints of one of the others.

Bait: Your right, and there were actually 67 prints total (I read my source wrong)…but that makes my point even more. So this action of stepping in the older persons footprints is an ape trait? Actually it’s a distinctive human trait (Yes, meaning Homo sapiens), like a child trying to match it’s older brothers or fathers…elders footsteps. Apes do not do that kind of action, they are not even aware of the footprints they leave, much less care if they are walking in someone else’s footprints.
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Bait original:
As to her walking upright, Sir Solly Zuckerman and Charles Oxnard concluded from their studies that the fossils of the australopithecines did NOT have the human upright gate...old news.
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Deb: Yeah...OOOOLLLLLDDDD news. Zuckerman looked at australo stuff in the 1950s, long before afarensis was ever found, and he was such a crackpot nobody agreed with him even then. Zuckerman's opinions are completely irrelevant now.

Bait: Actually the quote comes from Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, New York: Toplinger Publications, 1970, pp. 75-94. , NOT the 1950’s. And to a large part, Oxnard agreed with him.

The findings for Oxnard can be found, where he likened the skeletal structure of Australopithecines to that of modern orang-utans:

Charles E. Oxnard, "The Place of Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt", Nature, Vol 258, p. 389

Deb: Oxnard is rather more equivocal, but even he did not deny that australos were bipeds. The fact that australopithecines did not walk like modern humans is no revelation, because of course australos are NOT modern humans, and should not be expected to walk like modern humans....

Bait: Thank you for that acknowledgement. But then, why are you trying to attribute the footprints to them…the footprints strides, shape and form match that of modern humans, not ape, nor australopithecine’s. If australopithecine’s don’t walk like modern humans…then where is the debate, and where’s the evidence that they are related…ancestors of humans, or that Homo sapiens evolved from them? What makes them bipedal? Did they use their knuckles to assist them in walking? If they did, then they are quadropedal. Did they only walk a short distance on two feet only, as chimps do? Was it their habit, their normal way of locomotion to walk fully upright?
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Bait original:
But that was not all. In 1994, a team from Liverpool University launched an extensive research on the subject. They concluded that “the Australopithecines are quadropedal”. Source: Fred Spoor. Benard Wood, Frans Zonneveld, “Implication of Early Hominoid Labryntine Morphology for Evolution of Human Bipedal Locomotion”, Nature, vol 369, June 23, 1994. Pp 645-648
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Deb: Oh my goodness--This is COMPLETELY WRONG!!! I don't understand how you could simply invent quotes and then expect anyone to trust your arguments. I have this paper in front of me, and the words you place in quotes appear NOWHERE in it. What could you possibly hope to accomplish by this??

The *facts* are these: the initial examination of the configuration of the bony labyrinth of the ear of a very few fossils (*none* of which belonged to "Lucy's" species, btw) seemed to indicate that some of these fossils did not have a style of bipedalism like that of modern humans--IF one accepts the premise of a link between labyrinth proportions and locomotion.

Bait: If that is what it actually says, and all it says, then I very much apologize, and retract that quote. I have sent a letter to the source of my quote, requesting they also retract what they have stated/quoted. I’ll go and find the exact wording to see what it says for myself. I personally was not making it up…I got that from another source. But do note that according to your quote of their findings, they do say that the fossils they examined did not have modern human style of bipedalism, if you accept the premise of a link between labyrinth proportions and locomotion.


Deb: There was actually a fair amount of variability in the fossils. A further, greatly enhanced study that included a large number of primates, showed that the link between locomotion and the proportions of the bony labyrinth is even LESS clearcut than was thought, and no direct associations can be made. However, I have seen no creationist source cite this later, more comprehensive paper--could it be because the conclusions are not very favourable to them?
This study is:
Spoor F. & Zonnefeld F. 1998. Comparative review of the human bony labyrinth. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 41:211-251.

Bait: How does that hurt the creationist view? All that says is that the use of bony labyrinth shouldn’t be used to prove or test types of locomotion, because that method is unreliable. Thank you for the source though, I’ll look it up as well. But while we are on this subject, the bones of the ear canals of the australo’s are totally different than those of Homo sapiens..or any Homo species.

But since we are on that subject,
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quote:
“The comparative analysis of the semicircular canals of the inner ears of men and apes has demonstrated that the creatures which were alleged to have been ancestors of man were in truth ordinary apes. Australopithecus and Homo habilis have the inner ear canals of an ape whereas Homo erectus has the inner ear canal of a man. “

Source: Evolution deceit by Harum Yahya
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Bait: Yet another difference...another nail in the coffin.
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Bait Original
So Lucy DID NOT walk upright, as Donald Johanson has surmised...according to scientific evidence.
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Deb: The scientific evidence shows that without a doubt, australopithecine’s walked upright. There is not a single professional (and scores of 'em have examined australo morphology since "Lucy" was found, and lots of fossils have been found since) who disagrees with this position, and so far you have not cited one piece of scientific evidence, nor cited one line of the professional literature, or quoted one single living paleoanthropologist, who suggests otherwise (whereas you seem to have simply made stuff up out of thin air). In short, you have utterly failed to support your assertion.

Bait: Incorrect, there is much doubt, and there are many who disagree, and do not think australopithecine’s walked upright. In fact, there was even a debate as to the validity of the species of A. afarensis, although many researchers now do accept it as a new species.

See: <a href="http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/afarensis.html" target="_blank">http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/afarensis.html</a>

Here are some of the “doubts:
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quote:
"A chance discovery made by looking at a cast of the bones of "Lucy," the most famous fossil of Australopithecus afarensis, shows her wrist is stiff, like a chimpanzee's, Brian Richmond and David Strait of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., reported. This suggests that her ancestors -- and ours -- walked on their knuckles. The stiff wrist limits the flexibility of the hand but makes the forearm strong enough to carry the weight of a heavy primate"
("Man's early ancestors were knuckle walkers" by Maggie Fox, San Diego Union Tribune Quest Section, March 29th, 2000)
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"We've got to have some ancestors. We'll pick those. Why? Because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidates. That's by and large the way it has worked. I am not exaggerating."
(Nelson, Gareth [Chairman and Curator of the Department of Herpetology and Ichthyology, American Museum of Natural History, New York], interview, Bethell T., The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1986, in Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove Ill., Second Edition, 1993, p76)
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"Restricting analysis of fossils to specimens satisfying these criteria, patterns of dental development of gracile australopithecines and Homo Habilis remain classified with African apes. Those of Homo erectus and Neanderthals are classified with humans."
(Holly Smith, American Journal of Physical Antropology, Vol 94, 1994, pp. 307-325. )
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"The present results lead to the conclusion that the bipedalism of the Australopithecus must have differed from that of Homo. Not only did Australopithecus have less ability to maintain hip and knee extension during the walk, but also probably moved the pelvis and lower limb differently. It seems that the australopithecine walk differed significantly from that of humans, involving a sort of waddling gait, with large rotary movements of the pelvis and shoulders around the vertebral column. Such a walk, likely required a greater energetic cost than does human bipedalism. The stride length and frequency of australopithecines, and consequently their speed, should have differed from that of Homo in contrast to some recent hypotheses of dynamic similarity among hominids. A previous paper has suggested that the pelvic proportions of Australopithecus could provide some arguments for an arboreal locomotion. The results of the present study suggest amplification of this opinion."
(Berg, Christine, "How Did the Australopithecines Walk? A Biomechanical Study of the Hip and Thigh of Australopithecus Afarensis," Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 26 (April 1994), pp. 259-273. Berg is at the Natural History Museum in Paris, France.)
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and finally:
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"The study of human origins seems to be a field in which each discovery raises the debate to a more sophisticated level of uncertainty."
(Christopher B. Stringer, Scientific American; May 1993, p.138)
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Bait: But there is NO doubt amongst a single professional…okaaaaaay, if you say so…..

The truth is that it’s those with humanist beliefs that insist that they are bipedal, even though the evidence also points otherwise. The evidence is that they were quadropedal, though they probably walked upright for short distances, just like chimp’s do. As to functional morphology, how could an ape be like an ape from the waist up, and only like human from the waist down? Nature does not work that way. They would have to have other human like traits, which they do not. Narikotome homo erectus (Turkana boy) was found near Lake Turkana Kenya…who WAS bipedal. But then he is classed as Homo erectus, but the skull looked like a neanderthal. Paleoanthropologist Alan Walker said he doubted that the average pathologist could tell the difference between the fossil and a modern human.
Source: Boyce Rensberger, The Washington Post, November 19, 1984.

Which supports my claim that Homo erectus is just another geographical race of Homo sapien.

Lucy, the most complete skeleton of the australo’s, was only 40% complete…and did not have a knee joint. Here is a picture of her skeleton:

<a href="http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/lucy.html" target="_blank">http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/lucy.html</a>

Notice the rib cage, and other parts of the skeleton are decidedly APE. The reconstructed skull is also ape. Knucklewalkers (quadropedal) has a ridge of bone extending down the radius to stabilize the wrist when weight is placed on it. The Lucy specimen has evidence of this ridge, though admittedly less evident than what is found in chimps and gorilla’s, but it’s there none the less.

What is also forgotten is the hip was actually pieced together by Johansons team, as he relates:

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Lucy’s left innominate [hip-joint socket] had been bent out of shape and broken into about forty pieces while it was embedded in the ground. Owen X-rayed the fossil and discovered that the back of Lucy’s pelvis, where the sacrum connects with the innominate, had smashed against a rock or another bone during burial, shattering and twisting the ilium. He then spent six months carefully outlining and numbering each fragment of ilium, casting each piece of the fossil in plaster, smoothing out the edges, and then reassembling them in a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Every fragment had to line up with adjoining pieces from both the front and the back side of the bone to convince Owen that he had overcome any distortion that occurred after the bone was damaged. Once Owen had restored the left side of the pelvis, he sculpted a mirror image of the right side in plaster and placed Lucy’s sacrum in between to complete his masterpiece
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So, is it remotely possible that Owen could have slightly mis-aligned the pieces of the hip, making it look more human than it is?

Then the knee found at a deeper level (strata) was added to make Lucy seem like she was bipedal. Here is the picture of the knee:

<a href="http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/al129-1.html" target="_blank">http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/al129-1.html</a>

Looks like Homo erectus to me, judging from the picture.
How do we know the knee was not from a Homo species such as Homo erectus, that Johanson decided fits well with Lucy?

As for me citing “one line of the professional literature, or quoted one single living paleoanthropologist, who suggests otherwise” what about Tim White, Russell Tuttle, Charles Oxnard, Louis Robbins, even Roger Lewin's book YOU cited, indicating that there is controversy.
I provided some other quotes from professional literature, living paleoanthropologists, other scientists, etc. See above... What more do you need?

And as to the debate of the origins of the Homo species in general:

In an article for Science magazine concerning Australopithecus garhi written by :
Berhane Asfaw, 1 Tim White, 2* Owen Lovejoy, 3 Bruce Latimer, 4,5 Scott Simpson, 5 Gen Suwa 6

Science 284: 629-635 (April 23, 1999).
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“The lack of an adequate hominid fossil record in eastern Africa between 2 and 3 million years ago (Ma) has hampered investigations of early hominid phylogeny”
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and:

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“Great uncertainty has continued to confound the origin of Homo because of a lack of evidence from the interval between 2 and 3 Ma “.
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In other words, their seems to be evidence, but it is still very uncertain as to the origin of the Homo species.

To be fair though, this article goes on to describe new discoveries of a new, similar species to Australo’s, and Mr. White is NOT speaking against any australo’s. But he does recognise that there is confusion as to the true origins of Homo sapiens. This is my point, you cannot say for certainty that australo’s are even related to Homo sapiens, much less our ancestors.
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Bait original:
To make matters worse, there has been a long standing dispute and competition between Leakey and Johanson for publicity and funding, which is probably why Johanson felt it necessary to have his new fossil classification Australopithecus afarensis to be recognized as the ancestor of both Homo habilis (represented by skull 1470) and Homo sapiens (and probably why he had the date retested and re-established.)
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Deb: This makes no sense. Personality conflicts might make for interesting gossip, but they are
irrelevant to whether Australopithecus afarensis exists, what its morphology tells us, and
certainly to what the evidence of their relations to other hominids are. This is why it is always better to get one's data from the professional peer-reviewed literature; for the most part, the data therein have to stand or fall on their own merit irrespective of the personal opinions of any individual scientist. Johanson may have discovered "Lucy", and he is free to believe anything he wants about her, but for his opinion to be meaningful it has to be supported by the evidence. If the evidence points to afarensis as being a candidate for human ancestry, then that's where it points.
This may come as a surprise to you, though--many, if not most, current professionals in the field are less interested in questions of *ancestry* than you might realize. It is more important, at the moment, to try and establish sister-group relationships than the exact nature of those relationships (i.e. we have established that australos are more closely related to modern humans than they are to chimps. Therefore we know that one species of australo was ancestral to humans, even if we don't know exactly which one). It is the general public, unfortunately, which keeps demanding to know which species is the ancestor to which other, so many paleoanthros accommodate them by drawing family trees.
There is a debate over just how much time australos might have spent in the trees, but there is no scientific doubt whatsoever that australos walked on two legs when they were on the ground, and they walked with a gait and a valgus knee (knees close together at the midline of the body) like humans do. The fact that they probably did not stroll around exactly like modern humans is not an argument, since they were NOT modern humans, and would not behave like they were. From the waist down australos were built entirely like bipeds, and it takes wholesale denial and refusal to face reality to remain blind to this simple fact of functional morphology

Bait: Not true, there is a continuing debate over bipedal locomotion, and how they were built from the waist down, as evidenced by the quotes I gave above. You yourself admit that they did not walk as we do. Answer this, what advantage in nature is bipedal locomotion without the associated advantages of higher intelligence and hand dexterity? Without the associated advantages, natural selection would have eliminated that species, and the disadvantage of bipedalism would have ceased. Quadropedalism is far more advantageous to survival of the fittest, when compared to bipedalism by itself. There is more evidence that Homo species came on the scene suddenly, than anything else.

As to the gossip…I never said Australopithecus afarensis did not exist, just that it is not evidence of ancestry of Homo sapien’s, or bipedalism. The “gossip”, the rivalry/dispute between Johanson and Leakey casts doubt as to the accuracy of their contentions, especially Johansons, that Australopithecus afarensis is the prelude to Homo sapien.
________________________________________________
Bait original:
Australopithecine members had much longer and curved toes (phalanges) and fingers. They also had a cranially orientated shoulder joint and other features of the arms, typical of tree climbers. As well as the foot, and foramen magnum, we see bipedalism in the shape of the pelvis and the angle between the thighbone and the knee (Leakey, 1994).
_________________________________________________
Deb: Well, so far so good; are you sure you wanted to include this?

Bait: I had included it to show that I’m not afraid to give evidence from sources on the “other side”. The point I was getting to with this quote was that it was admitted that they had cranially orientated shoulder joints, and other features of the arms, typical of tree climbers, not bipedal walkers. I wished to give the full quote though so as not to be accused of using only part of a quote.
_________________________________________________
Bait original:
That means that Donald Johanson may have (gasp) AN AGENDA...ie: MONEY AND FAME. So much for those many references you gave me as evidence that Lucy walked upright (virtually all of them were from Johanson and his associates).
_________________________________________________
Deb: And what agenda would lead you to invent non-existent quotes, pray tell?

Bait: I never said I did not have an agenda, I’m an admitted creationist…and the quotes you are referring to I have already retracted, and apologized for. I was not intentionally making up, or inventing anything. But my point was to the reliability of Johansons hypothesis, to which Oolon had given several references to prove his point that we are descended from Lucy’s kind.

Remember that you are responding on his behalf, and my post was directed to him, not you, with his style of arguments in mind. He (and others) often tries to shoot down my references by stating that they “have an agenda” ie: they are creationists, so their opinions do not count. Hence my reply concerning Johanson since Oolon was extensively using him as references against my arguments. An example of accounts of Mr. Johansons motivations:
__________________________________________________

We went looking for Yoel Rak, an Israeli paleoanthropologist who had interrupted his anatomy lectures at Tel Aviv University to join us in the field. Yoel had looked furiously for hominid fossils at Hadar in 1990 but came up empty-handed. He said he couldn’t leave this year without finding a hominid, and as an expert on the australopithecine face, what he really wanted was a skull, which had so far eluded us.

And

Perhaps because Yoel was with me, I began mentally picturing skull fragments--smooth, flat, slightly dished pieces of bone. Then I blew away some soft sand in front of me and saw the edges of a pair of eye sockets. “Oh my God,” I shouted. “Here’s part of the skull. We’ve got glabella!” Glabella, one of the reference points used for skull measurements, is the most forward projecting part of the forehead, just above the bony ridge over the eye sockets.

And:

In October 1973, we arrived at Hadar with nine other French and American scientists, prepared for a two-month stay. By this time I had left Chicago and taken a job teaching anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. With these credentials, I had managed to get some funding for my first expedition as a co-leader. I knew, though, that I had to prove myself by finding some hominids or the money would dry up.
_________________________________________________
Bait: So the question becomes “Why did Johanson put australos toes on a Homo foot to compare with the footprints? Why did he use a knee joint found in a deeper strata to justify the bipedally of Lucy? How is it he just suddenly pictured skull fragments, blew on some dust, and shazaam…they appeared? Could it be to prevent his funding from drying up?


Deb: Besides, many people other than Johanson--in fact, many people who disagree with him,

Bait: Thank you…you made my point as to the validity of Johanson references.


Deb: and many people whose only "agenda" is scientific credibility--have examined the fossils, and all conclude that australos were bipeds.

Bait: I was not questioning their “agenda’s”, only Johansons, but many of those you speak of start out with a humanist mindset, meaning with preconceived ideas that man could only have come from apes, just like I have preconceived ideas from a creationists point of view. I believe humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, was the result of an intelligent design, by a higher intelligence I refer to as God, others YAHWA, Allah, etc. Their (typical humanists) training prevents them from even considering the possibility of a higher intelligence, by whatever name, creating humans, or any life on earth for that matter, no matter what the evidence really shows. Everything has evolved by accident, by chance to them, to which I disagree.

Yes, there are many who have examined the fossils and came to the conclusion that australos was bipedal. There are many others who also have examined the fossils, and they admit that there is not enough evidence to be able to conclude true bipedal locomotion in other than Homo species, meaning from Homo erectus on, especially in the sense or manner that Homo sapiens walk. Others still totally dispute it. Chimps, as an example, walk on two legs on occasion, but they are not considered bipedal. There is also not enough evidence to truly state that australos are the ancestors of Homo sapiens. So my point is that one should not flat out say we are absolutely descended from apes, because there is no conclusive evidence to support that statement.

Deb: There is a debate over just how much time australos might have spent in the trees, but there is no scientific doubt whatsoever that australos walked on two legs when they were on the ground, and they walked with a gait and a valgus knee (knees close together at the midline of the body) like humans do. The fact that they probably did not stroll around exactly like modern humans is not an argument, since they were NOT modern humans, and would not behave like they were. From the waist down australos were built entirely like bipeds, and it takes wholesale denial and refusal to face reality to remain blind to this simple fact of functional morphology

Australos are apes the way modern humans are apes...but of course, that is not what you mean, is it?

Bait: Nope…I meant that they are ape as in like chimps, gorillas, oragutans, rhesus.

Deb: Australos share features with humans that they do not share with chimps

Bait: Like what…be specific. The fact they have bones?

.Deb: Australos are not chimps. Chimps are chimps.

Bait: Deep….but I agree, and humans (Homo sapiens) are humans, not Australos. It has been suggested however that they are the ancestors of pigmy chimps. Explain also, the startling discovery of a Homo sapien mandible aged 2.3 million years, coded A.L. 666-1 unearthed in Hader, Ethiopia. "..(D. Johanson, Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language, p.169)and why this is never brought up?

Deb: Nonsense about Neanderthals snipped, except for the request for a PROPER reference for this William Laughlin study, so that maybe someone would have a chance of actually finding it: things like date, title, publication, etc.

Bait: The quote concerning the Laughlin study comes from a book called “Evolution Deceit” by Harum Yahya, which quotes from a reference to “Marvin Lubenow, Bones of Contention, Grand Rapids, Baker, 1992. p. 136. “.

Oh, and the “Neanderthal nonsense” in part comes from "The Neanderthal Brain: What Was Primitive", American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement, Vol 12, 1991, p. 94.

(whew)

Gotta run, will get back to you on the rest later. It’s been a pleasure though.

Bests,
Ron

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: Bait ]</p>

Bait

Hi Kosh,
Yup, ok....she fried my server though
Took me a bit to get it back up.

I love it when you guys go hunt the professionals when you can't handle it yourself.
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside....
Ron

Kosh

Are you sure it wasn't God who fried your server?


We are all standing on the shoulders of giants
in this forum, unless of course you've done all
this research firsthand yourself? I see nothing
wrong with having access to professionals from
the field. I would much rather have that than
a bunch of quote mining....

BTW all....don't know how much I'll be able
to post now. My 2 1/2 month, uh, "extended
vacation" is over now, and I started on a new
contract today. Have to work to pay the bills!

Oolon Colluphid

If I may, Ergaster...

It’s not that I can’t handle it, it’s simply that ‘professionals’, naturally, have the information readily at their fingertips, whereas I have to look it up. The point with science of course is that anyone can go find the information, because it’s not just made up.

I do most of this from work, and do my best to reply to everything I can. Your posts have been damn long, and I do have to work at work sometimes.

What a sad existence you must lead. Does someone having to get a CORGI-registered ‘professional’ in to fix a gas boiler similarly make you feel warm and fuzzy? I’d say it makes you cephalophallic.

So you think that the knee joint is the only evidence of bipedality in Lucy’s skeleton?? What about the pelvis: the shortened, broader ilium, the wide human-like sacrum which is posterior to the acetabulum, the cortical bone in the femoral neck, and the well-developed sciatic notch? What about the spine’s curvature for upright posture, the angle of the shaft of the distal femur and the proximal tibia... these are all human-like features.

As to her knee joint, see here: <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html</a>

Assertion. You can back that up can you? And do you mean afarensis, africanus, or [Paranthropus] garhi, robustus etc?

The point is that, sure, she’s got ape-like features. But as well as several unique features, she has numerous features that are distinctively human.

So tell me Ron, what do you think an early bipedal hominid ought to look like?

Found at more or less the same date, Ron. Something was walking upright at the time, and afarensis was walking upright. And no, it’s not clear-cut that they are human. As this page says:

We don’t know for sure what did make them. But there is enough no reason to think that they could only have been made by modern human feet.

Again, we are apes. Again, what sort of prints would you expect to find a bipedal ape making? Again, do you mean a Homo species with a skull like this?



or like this?



(cont . . .)

[ March 26, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

“Likened”?! Likened in what way? And anyway, Vol 258 came out in 1975. Do you think that in a quarter of a century there’s been no further progress in palaeoanthropolgy?

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Uh, how about their skeletons?

Some of the time, perhaps. But Lucy’s arms are proportionally much shorter compared to her legs than any modern ape’s (apart from humans – and hers are longer than ours), so on all fours, her bum would have been in the air, though not as much as a modern human trying it. This is all as we’d expect in a creature making the transition from mostly quadrupedal to fully bipedal locomotion.

You really can’t grasp the idea of becoming, can you? Evolution is a process. Things aren’t supposed to go from one thing to another in a big jump. That is a creationist straw man. Therefore, once again, what would you expect an ape lineage that was becoming more and more bipedal to be like?

Why would they? A’piths don’t have to fit in one category or another, they are what they are. Only creationists insist on drawing a line and saying ‘this side is ape, that side is human’. If evolution is true, then it is a process. Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett put it rather well in The Science of Discworld:

If evolution were true, there should be no magic moment at which an ‘ape’ became ‘human’, any more than there is a magic moment when the single cell of a fertilised egg becomes a person. Evolution predicts that there should be creatures at a particular period in time, in a particular place on the planet, that should share characteristics of separate groups such as Pan and Homo. Lo and behold, Australopithecines have a combination of human and ‘ape’ characteristics.

Creation, conversely, expects there to be (presumably clearly recognisable) discontinuities. So again, where do you draw the line, and why?

So? While you’re looking stuff up, I suggest you look up the concept of mosaic evolution.

Hardly. Only creationists mind one way or another. Evolution, if you hadn’t noticed, is accepted by all the major churches. There is nothing ‘humanist’ about it.

[quote][b] even though the evidence also points otherwise.

Yeah, also. Early A’piths might have done both. But their anatomy clearly shows a move towards more bipedality than any other ape.

And you are suddenly an expert? Mosaic evolution of morphology is one of the key features of many lineages, not just humans. Here’s just one, now quite old, reference: McHenry, H M (1975): Fossils and the mosaic nature of human evolution: Science 190:428. If you’re interested in it, I’ll send you a copy.

Really? His skull is the second one above. Here’s a couple of Neanderthals:





And here’s KNM WT 15000 again:



How come his endocrainial capacity is only around 900cc, well below that of modern humans, whereas Neanderthals had modern human-sized brains, if not a little bigger.

It also ‘looks like’ OH24 above...

See above.

Carrying stuff, being able to see further, reduced surface area to overhead sun... hey, ask an ostrich! Ask a chimp next time you see one walking on it’s back legs! How about this: whatever chimps walk bipedally for: more of the same. And what hand dexterity are you after? Are chimps not already pretty dextrous?

And you think that the habilis skull above is human?

And chimps have features typical of tree climbers too. More so, in fact. They therefore cannot be quadrupeds, or occasionally bipeds?

Actually, it tends to be the ‘others’. And the point is that the creationist agenda is so well documented as being disingenuous that it is safest assuming anything on any creationist website is suspect. Basically, I wouldn’t trust them to tell me the time.

I don’t think I actually ever mentioned Johanson in this thead. You found him amongst the sites I’ve linked.

And you accuse all other working palaeontologists of the same sort of thing then? They too are making it all up, seeing features that are not really there?

Sure. So are they all making all these fossils up or not? You are arguing that there is nothing to it but interpretation. A’piths are apes, Homo is human. Why then are the differences so quibble-able? If a process was involved, this is what we would expect. As I think you have already admitted, there is a great anatomical similarity between chimps and humans. What do you make of the even closer similarity between A africanus and H habilis? Is it not what the process predicts? Since you early on used it as a criterion, what do you make of the increase through time in cranial capacities which the fossils show? How is that down to interpretation?

Surely I’ve already mentioned many wonderful examples of the creator’s ‘intelligent design’? The recurrent laryngeal nerve, the arrectores pillorum, the post-auricular muscle, our spines, knees, wisdom teeth and coccyx?

And your evidence for separate creation is...? Your (typical creationist) beliefs prevent you from seeing what you don’t want to see.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Yeah, don’t we all. &lt;sigh&gt; Once more... there is absolutely nothing ‘chance’ about natural selection. It is the ANTITHESIS OF CHANCE. If you do not know even that, if you do not know the most basic fact about it, how the hell do you dare argue against evolution?!

You mean apart from anatomy, palaeontology, biochemistry, genetics, biogeography... No single piece of information conclusively proves human evolution (or that of any other creature). It is the overall pattern that builds up from dozens of separate lines of evidence, all of which only makes sense if evolution is correct.

Ron, just why would it be so awful for humans to be linked through ancestry to every other living thing?

And which ape is the rhesus?

Your sarcasm is misplaced. Since you mention it, having bones is relevant. Having precisely the same bones, differing only in subtle proportions and the odd lump or dip, is even more relevant. I have listed some of these shared features above.

Have a look at the tables here: <a href="http://biology.uindy.edu/Biol504/HUMANSTRATEGY/16transition.htm" target="_blank">http://biology.uindy.edu/Biol504/HUMANSTRATEGY/16transition.htm</a>

From there, here are some features of the Australopithecine...

Foot

Human-like:
1. calcaneal tuberosity may have medial and lateral inferior processes
2. medial longitudinal arch present
3. hallux is robust and of similar length to other digits
4. adduction mobility of hallux reduced in some specimens
5. metatarsophalangeal joints capable of hyperextension

Ape-like:
1. hallux still capable of adduction in some specimens
2. peroneal tubercle well developed

Unique:
1. phalanges of intermediate length
2. phalanges show slight curvature

Pelvis and proximal femur

Human-like:
1. ilium shortened, broader
2. sciatic notch well-developed
3. sacrum wide
4. sacrum posterior to acetabulum
5. cortical bone in femoral neck supports extended hip

Ape-like:
1. iliac blade projects more laterally than anteriorly
2. ischium long
3. femoral head small
4. low neck angle

Unique:
1. ilium excessively broad; pubis long
2. interacetabular distance increased
3. small sacroiliac joint surface
4. femoral neck long

Specific enough?

You mean ‘never brought up’ as in ‘published in one of the main palaeoanthropology journals’, presumably? (W H Kimbel et al, ‘Late Pliocene Homo and Oldowan Tools from the Hadar Formation (Kada Hadar Member), Ethiopia’, Journal of Human Evolution, 31 (1996), 549-561.) Because it is a conspiracy, of course.

If it were a conspiracy, why didn’t they just throw the specimen away? AL 66-1 isn’t H sapiens. It is not easily ascribable to any particular species. From:
<a href="http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/anthropology/aspring97.mhtml" target="_blank">http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/anthropology/aspring97.mhtml</a>

So how is simply not knowing which species it is covering anything up?

So, uh, Yahya doesn’t give a reference to the original study? One creationist quoting another? It may even be true, but why should we believe it? A Google search for Laughlin and erectus finds little except creationist references. (As a comparison, once Zilhman’s name was spelled correctly, up came loads of stuff.) Perhaps someone with access to Lubenow’s book can tell us what the real reference is...?

But anyway, erectus was a long-lived species, about a million years. And the species shows trends towards more sapiens-like features: a decrease in post-canine dentition and corresponding decrease in jaw size; vertical shortening of the face, increased brain size, etc. Indeed, there is much debate as to whether erectus became, in various localities, the modern races of sapiens – Wolpoff being one of the leading proponents of this ‘multiregional’ hypothesis. All of which doesn’t really matter. Erectus was nearly human. But earlier ones have some distinctly non-modern-human features too, such as cranial keeling, relatively (compared to modern humans) small thoracic spinal canal diameter, smaller cervical and lumbar swellings and smaller crainial capacity. All of which is what evolution expects. Drawing a line is the wrong image.

That should keep you going. Anything you want to add / correct, Ergaster?

Oolon

[ March 26, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Ergaster

Jes' popping in to mention that I'm a tad busy this week, but I am working on a reply to Bait's reply to me, which may appear towards week's end, if y'all don't get too far ahead of me and make me discouraged trying to keep up.

So far, though, all I can see from Bait is a distinct and profound unfamiliarity with that of which he speaks, and an unfortunate habit of repeating falsehoods and unsubstantiated or flatly erroneous claims.

I do have a question for him, before I go, and perhaps he'll be kind enough to answer succinctly: What on earth leads you to believe that quoting references that you have not read, and have garnered from second-or-third hand sources which also remain happily ignorant of the originals, qualifies as anything remotely resembling scholarship?

In short, if you don't know what the stuff actually says, how can you have the gumption to use it??