Bait

Hi Oolon,
Sorry about that ...I thought this thread died. I was off getting clobbered by John and Peez, and didn't notice more posts on this one. But since you wish to continue...here goes.


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You replied: Doubtless you mean chemists, geologists (Patrick and John excluded ), particle physicists, etc? Try asking anthropologists, such as our own Dr.G.H. and Ergaster, and they’ll all tell you that ‘Lucy’ is Australopithecus afarensis. She is the best-known and most complete specimen of that species.
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My response:
And the more research they do on her, the more they discover that she’s really just an ape. In fact, probably a species of pigmy chimpanzee. In March 1996, National Geographic had an article about “Lucy, and the recent researches, and Australopithecus afarensis. The results described as:

"On the other hand, Randall Susman, Jack Stern and William Jungers of the State University of New York at Stony Brook see a curvature in Lucy's finger and toe bones resembling that found in tree-dwelling apes. Her longer arms certainly would have helped her climb between branches. The Stony Brook specialists also see evidence in Lucy's ankle and pelvis that suggests she would have walked with slightly bent legs. They reckon she spent considerable time in trees and may well have slept among the branches."

The fact is that “Lucy” is real close to pigmy chimpanzees in that the body dimensions are the same, the body structure, cranial capacity, are also the same and guess what…according to Zhilman, the way that Pigmy Chimpanzees use their arms and feet are also very similar to Lucy.

As to the teeth array, it is now believed that the mandibular structure of Australopithecus afarensis look very similar to Ramapithecus, which is recognised as being in the orangutan class.


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You replied:
Based on what? I have already pointed out that her arms were much longer than any human’s. From her and from the bits of over 300 other individuals we have, we know that A afarensis had curved phalanges, which are also proportionally longer than in Homo sapiens, a U-shaped palate:

a somewhat conical ribcage... and cranial capacity of around 450cc, just over half the very bottom of the range you earlier said was human.
Here’s a composite reconstruction of an afarensis skull:
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Actually, I’d like to retract that statement. I was wrong, did not look close enough, must have ben tired, out of my mind...etc..or thinking of Neanderthal. OOPS!!! The more I look at the evidences, the more I see that Lucy was nothing more than an ancient ape. So I goofed...ok?

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You replied:
You are quite right. You do not think it, based on evidence; rather, as you say, you believe it. Regardless of the evidence. Tell me, Ron: if we did share a common ancestor, just what sort of evidence would convince you?
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My response:
Regardless of the evidence? What evidence? How about a good connection...a solid piece of fossil evidence showing the PROGRESSION from ape to man. A good explanation of why men regressed in everything except intelligence, in a VERY short period of time.
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I said:
although they look similar beneath the skin, because I believe humans are separate all in themselves
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You replied:
Yep, a separate species, no argument there. But speciation has been observed, so how does that bolster your point?
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My response:
Well, thank you for that anyway. But the link has not been firmly established between man and ape, as far as fossils are concerned. There has not been any half way in-between ape/man found. In fact, everytime it seems one is found (such as Lucy), they turn out to be either like a modern man…or fully an ape...like Lucy.
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I said:
and were created by God
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You replied:
Please define, then, this creation that god allegedly performed. Why might such a creator include features such as a mostly non-functional genome, a coccyx (yeah it’s got muscle attachments, but that doesn’t require it to be made from several separate bones that then fuse), a retina that is backwards from the more obvious design, a laryngeal nerve that does a substantial detour from one side of the neck to the other, a jaw too small for the number of teeth it holds, and a broken vitamin C gene, to name but a few items. This creation he performed is remarkable in its mimicry of evolution, or else his qualifications as a designer of omniscience and omnipotence are somewhat suspect.
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My response:
Mostly non-functional NOW…or as far as you know. If it is so non-functional...are you willing to volunteer to have it surgically removed? How about the other "non-functional" organs of your body...are you willing to have them removed as well? If they serve no purpose..there shouldn't be any reason to have them removed. Reality check: You may just not know what the function is yet.
AND...All of the items you mentioned could have been a result of “natural selection” of the human species. I never said we haven’t changed since God created us…fact is, we probably have to a certain extent. I said God made us…which is my my belief. I did not say we have not changed since then. MY contention is that, although we are similar, I do not think we evolved from apes.
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I said:
That is my belief
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You replied:

Do you actually have any grounds for this belief?
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My response:

Yes, the main ones include:

1. The time frame. The amount of time that has occurred between the supposed time that man split from ape does not support the amount of changes or differences that are present between humans and our “nearest relative”, the chimpanzee, or any ape branch for that matter. Yes, we are similar in many respects…but there has been some major changes in the dental array, the skull shape, bone structure, etc…even the fact that humans (for the most part) are not generally hairy all over…but apes are. Too many differences, too little time.
2. Man is bipedal…in a different, and less efficient manner than other bipedal creatures, and especially compared to quadropedial creatures. He's in a class all his own in this respect. He (man) is slower, and much less efficient than almost any of the other creatures from a survival standpoint.
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I said:
and if you wish to believe you're an accident of nature...ok, that's your choice.
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Accident... of... nature... Hmmm. You really don’t have the least understanding of evolution do you Ron? There is absolutely nothing, NOTHING, accidental about the marvellous ‘designs’ in nature. It is NOT down to chance. The accidents are the raw material, but it is natural selection that allows only the neutral ones, and any improvements, to move on to the next level of the game, the next generation. We are not here because of chance, but because of the antithesis of chance.
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My response:

Well, I could ask you the same thing my friend. You just admitted that nature improves by DESIGN…Hey, I AGREE…now the question is, who then is the designer? Natural selection dictates that improvements for survival survive, rarely going back, regressing. If it is an improvement, or if it is neutral, it may survive, if not (regression) it becomes extinct. You said so yourself!!! Improvements goes to the next level. So is human bipedalism an improvement…is it superior to quadropedalism? The answer is no, human bipedal locomotion is very much less efficient than quadropedal because it is slower, and harder to do. Apes stride is easier, faster, and more efficient compared to mans stride. Since bipedalism is a disadvantage rather than an advantage, natural selection would have eliminated this first ancestor of human…would it not? Then, perhaps apes are evolved from man…not the other way around? That is the way natural selection should have worked...from worse to better, not better to worse.

Which brings us to the latest news…where bipedal skeletons (humans?) have been found in forested areas causing scientists to rethink their hypothesis of why man became bipedal to start with. Previously they thought it was because of a theory of shrinking forests…or that they ventured into the plains.

In fact, Science magazine wrote :” Bipedality, the definitive characteristic of the earliest hominids, has been regarded as an adaptive response to a transition from forested to more-open habitats in East Africa sometime between 12 million and 5 million years ago. “

There was always the questions amongst the scientists of why did the ape stay in the forest if it was advantageous to go to the plains? Ah, but there is now evidence that the plains theory is untrue, bogus, which at the same time eliminates the ONLY reason scientists could think of where bipedalism could have had an advantage, why it would have started. In a forest setting, quadropedalism is MUCH more efficient, as is tree dwelling. Bipedalism and ground dwelling would get you eaten.

So the question now is “Does natural selection normally regress a species as successfully as it has humans?” I don’t think so, in fact, it would seem to go against the very nature of survival of the fittest.

Oh, and the footprints that were found near “Lucy” by Mary Leakey in 1978…they were fully HUMAN .
Paleoanthropologist Tomothy White (who worked with Mary Leakey btw) remarked:
"Make no mistake about it… They are like modern human footprints… The external morphology is the same. There is a well-shaped modern heel with a strong arch and a good ball of the foot in front of it. The big toe is straight in line. It doesn't stick out to the side like an ape toe, or like the big toe in so many drawings you see of Australopithecus in books."

The footprints are proof that HUMANS were present at the time that Lucy was alive.

Check out: <a href="http://www.ummah.org.uk/harunyahya/evol/ebk1-3.html" target="_blank">http://www.ummah.org.uk/harunyahya/evol/ebk1-3.html</a> for a good argument.
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I said:
We'll agree to disagree. One major difference I see is the way the brains are layed out.
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You replied:
Really? Is the chimp corpus callosum outside the cerebrum? Does the chimp parietal lobe not abut the occipital lobe, and does it not deal with somatosensory perception and the integration of visual and somatospatial information? Is chimp auditory perception not located in the temporal lobe? What major differences? In fact, what difference at all, that is not a matter of degree?
You might find this article interesting: Similarities Found In Human, Chimp Brains.
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My response:
But according to NeuroRx, the newsletter for the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics, there is a significant difference in how the genes, including those of the brain, liver and blood, are expressed and regulated. Gene expressions in liver and blood are very similar between chimps and humans…and greatly different in rhesus monkeys…but the gene expression in the brain are nearly identical between chimps and rhesus monkeys and very different in humans. (Genes and Minds Initiative Workshop in Ape Genomics) Science 2001;292: 44-45...so the brain IS greatly different.
Oh yea, our sugars are different too.
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I said:
And why, in these thousands of years
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You replied:
Erm, I thought you had said you accepted an old earth? Don’t sell your argument short. Call the these ten thousand. That is still a five hundreth of the time since we shared an ancestor with chimps and gorillas.
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My response:
Language Semantics now?
Ok…tens of thousands…how about around 3 - 5 million….still just a blink in time in the ol'evolution scale, and still not enough time to account for all of the differences between man and ape…even our supposed cousins the chimps.
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I said:

have not any of the other apes increased/evolved into intellegence anywhere near our intellegence.
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You replied:

Equally, why, in millions of years, have we not evolved the heat-sensing abilities of rattlesnakes, the hearing range of dogs, the olfactory abilities of moths, the taste/olfactory sensitivity of sharks, the visual acuity of birds of prey, bat-like echolocation to see in the dark or a whale’s ability to hold its breath? Insects have been around rather longer than even primates, yet their intelligence is still a bit lacking compared to us. Cyanobacteria should be the brightest things in the galaxy, with a three and a half billion year head start on us.
You have it backwards. The question should be, why have we accelerated away from the apes in this capacity?
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My response:
Why not indeed? Your helping me my friend...answer your own questions...why haven't we?
But then, we have accelerated in intelligence only….everything else we have gone backwards, regressed in speed, strength, teeth, hair, most of our natural weapons and defenses have become less in comparison to apes…opposite to what natural selection would normally dictate. Our species should have gone extinct long ago, but we haven't...instead we're on top of the food chain. Explain that, if you can. Are you sure apes are not evolved from man?
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You replied:
And the simple answer is, our ancestors’ lifestyles, once they split from the other apes, meant that intelligence was a premium. Brains are big expensive things to own. You only have the limousine model if you can afford it, or rather, if you can’t afford not to. It was a feature where incremental increases over the already high primate intelligence conferred survival and reproduction value. There is much debate about what these pressures were, but likely things (it’s probably not a single factor) include having free hands and an even more complex society than other primates.
To conclude with repetition: why do you think humans and apes do not share common ancestry?
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My response:

Because natural selection does not normally go backwards in developments, especially to the degree it has with humans …yes, sometimes it goes sideways, sometimes neutral, but almost never backwards. Again, are you sure apes did not evolve from us? If intelligence is so expensive, would not natural selection have eliminated it?
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You said:
And while I'm repeating myself, please define 'kinds'. Still waiting on that one.
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My response:
Sorry,thought we covered that one. Ok…closest I can come to. How about Kingdoms…as in how we humans classify kingdom to phylum to class to order to family to genus to species and variety. At the top...Kingdoms of plants and animals. Or perhaps you can go next to phylum...take your choice.
As I stated once before, we do not know, nor have any way to know what exactly God meant by “kinds”..but for the sake of argument..OUR human classification of Kingdom may suffice. Your turn…what do YOU think kinds mean?

Whew'...gotta run, this enough to get you going?



Bests to you.
Ron

Oolon Colluphid

Funny that. Anthropologists, anatomists, geneticists, palaeoanthropologists etc say the same about Homo sapiens. You think there’s a dividing line, it’s up to you to demonstrate one.

This is your assertion. Can you name a single working palaeoanthropologist who thinks so? The point is, ‘similar to a pygmy chimpanzee’ is pretty much what we’d expect an early human ancestor to be like. The other point is that all the differences between ‘Lucy’ and chimps is in the direction of being more human-like.

Ah, I see you’re consulting the most prestigious journal in palaeontology! Oh well, fair enough then...

Oh really? And do tell, what was on the first hand? This wouldn’t be out of context to support your position by any chance, would it?

Yup, she has a curvature of these bones. To my untrained eye, the curvature is approximately half that between chimp and human, ie they’re curved, but not nearly as much as chimp ones. (Source: Benton 2000, Vertebrate Palaeontology.)

From <a href="http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/online/primate_anatomy/lecture_10/" target="_blank">Anatomy of the Hand</a>:

In other words, some features of each, though more ‘ape-like ones. Which is what we’d expect, since she’s early after the divergence.

“Longer”? Longer than what? I’ve already pointed out that her arms are longer, proportionally, than a human’s. They are also significantly shorter, proportionally, than any living ape’s except humans. About halfway in between, in fact.

Yeah, but she walked. Bipedally. Much more often, and much more efficiently, than a chimp can. Vitamin D deficiency can cause people to walk with slightly bent legs. Doesn’t mean they ain’t walking. And then there’s the Laetoli footprints...

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

So? Suppose that evolution’s right. Just what would you expect a creature, whose descendants might become humans, but had not long diverged from the chimp lineage, to be like?

Cont...

Oolon Colluphid

Damned UBB...

Wrong. Her arms are too short.

Meaning what things? By ‘body structure’, even to specific anatomy, we humans are ‘real close to pigmy chimpanzees’ too. There’s little that isn’t just a case of ‘stretch this a bit, shorten that a bit’ etc. Please be more precise.

Yup. So? Is cranial capacity something that cannot be incrementally increased?

Since you like Stern and Susman’s work, perhaps you’d like to hear what else they have to say on the matter. From <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piths.html" target="_blank">here</a>:

Well make up your mind. According to your quote, afarensis walked with slightly bent legs. Chimps, as you should know, tend to waddle on their legs, not swing from the hips. They could not have made the Laetoli prints. And this Zhilman... funny how she only turns up on creationist sites, isn’t it? At least, she’s Zhilman on the creationist sites. Her name is <a href="http://anthro.ucsc.edu/lab/zihlman.html" target="_blank">Adrienne Zihlman</a>. I have e-mailed her for confirmation of these claims, I’ll let you know what she says. Meanwhile, it appears she’s been quoted out of context :

(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/misquotes.html)

Oolon Colluphid

References please. But meanwhile, concentrate on what you can see of the jaw of this, an orangutan:



Here’s afarensis. Take another look at the jaw.



Now please define ‘very similar’.

No problem Ron

So I’ll ask again: if evolution were true, what sort of fossils would you expect to find? What characteristics should the creatures have? And how do you propose to see a progression in a single fossil? That’s why I’ve shown you several.

Regressed?? You call our manual dexterity a regression? The finesse with which we can form sounds with our lips and tongue?

And it seems, never could be for you.

Hence asking you to define the exact characteristics of the two. For each one you offered, I have provided an exception, be it brain size, bipedality, arm length, dentition, etc. If no half way in-between ape/man has been found, what do you call the creatures we have found that have features of each alleged group?

Yeah? What about something with a skull like this?



To remind you, a modern human’s skull looks like this:



This creature had a cranial capacity of 880cc, estimated at just over 900cc if it were fully adult. And it’s fully bipedal.

(more to follow, board allowing...)

Bait

Hello Oolon,
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My replies: Here goes...the dividing lines.

Ok, first the question of how Ramapithecus is mmore connected ot orangutans, and more closely related to ape than man...check out:

<a href="http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Ramapithecus.htm" target="_blank">http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Ramapithecus.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/6/79.06.02.x.html" target="_blank">http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/6/79.06.02.x.html</a>
<a href="http://www.onelife.com/evolve/manev.html" target="_blank">http://www.onelife.com/evolve/manev.html</a>
<a href="http://www.chineseprehistory.org/pics1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.chineseprehistory.org/pics1.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s54.htm" target="_blank">http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s54.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.sbg.ac.at/psy/people/kleiter/allgem/all0/node3.html" target="_blank">http://www.sbg.ac.at/psy/people/kleiter/allgem/all0/node3.html</a>
<a href="http://www.serindian.com/sa-research/sa0aa13.htm" target="_blank">http://www.serindian.com/sa-research/sa0aa13.htm</a>
<a href="http://hjem.get2net.dk/Paleontology/text/species.html" target="_blank">http://hjem.get2net.dk/Paleontology/text/species.html</a>

Now as to how Lucy is actually closer to ape than man...in fact, she's fully just another ape.
Check out:
<a href="http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~pgore/students/f97/glenda/australopithecus.htm" target="_blank">http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~pgore/students/f97/glenda/australopithecus.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.toyen.uio.no/human/australopithecus.htm" target="_blank">http://www.toyen.uio.no/human/australopithecus.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.liberty.edu/courses/apol290/notes/Powerpoint/apol7/sld023.htm" target="_blank">http://www.liberty.edu/courses/apol290/notes/Powerpoint/apol7/sld023.htm</a>

In addition,
Columbia Encyclopedia, sixth edition:

“There is no consensus among the experts concerning the evolutionary relationship among the various australopithecines, or between the australopithecines and Homo habilis, which is considered by many to be the earliest species of the genus Homo.”

And:

“Many researchers believe that the species that evolved into H. habilis was A. africanus. Other experts reject this model, as well as the claim that A. africanus played any such key role.”

In “Natures Holism magazine”: (on differences etc. of Homo s. and Australopithecus)

1] Both Australopithecus and Homo sp. are bipedal apes as shown by the central position foramen magnum (the hole at the base of the skull for the spinal column), typical of an upright posture. This unusual feature leads to the two species being grouped together. 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).

3] In the genus Homo, the inner ear structure is identical to Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans), while the Australopithecines' inner ear semicircular canals resemble those of apes.

6] Australopithecines have a conical shaped rib cage, similar to apes and tree climbers, not barrel shaped as in humans. Early Homo species must have been physically active, while this is not so with the Australopithecines. A Homo erectus skeleton, called Turkana boy, was tall and would have been powerfully muscled. Australopithecus would not have been able to breathe as we do when running. This places Homo as a runner and Australopithecus as a less active animal. To support this we find that Australopithecines have a typical apelike heavy build for their height, while early Homo species had the more agile build of humans.

7] With the greater activity of Homo species as compared to the Australopithecines, the blood vessel structure draining the brain of the Homo line is much more conducive to cooling than the Australopithecines. An active animal has to remain cool and dissipate heat and its physiology has to adapt to this.

And Using your own resources:

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Donald Johanson, Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University wrote of Mary Leakey…(the one who found the Lucy skeleton in the first place):
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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?


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.

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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You said:And then there’s the Laetoli footprints...
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My reply:

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 being…probably by children. Again, there is NOT enough evidence to link Lucy (or any australopithecus)and the footprints together, in fact, the evidence points AGAINST it.

BTW, You can see a picture of these footprints at : <a href="http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/~crsmith/fall99/leakey.html" target="_blank">http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/~crsmith/fall99/leakey.html</a>

I can, if you like, list a number of scientists...evolutionists in fact, that agree that the footprints are HUMAN. In fact, I think I will:

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”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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

So Lucy DID NOT walk upright, as Donald Johanson has surmised...according to scientific evidence.

Will YOU now believe it? Or are you going to hold to your BELIEF? How much evidence do YOU need?

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.)

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).

Another interesting fact though is that according to several experts such as Loring Brace (University of Michigan), Prof. Alan Walker (John Hopkins University), and evolutionist paleoanthropologist J.E. Cronin, all agree that KNM-ER 1470 should actually be classed as Australopithecus, in particular A/africanus (a dead line), NOT Homo habilis. Hey...these are YOUR guys...evolutionists, NOT creationists.

In addition, there is NO real evidence that these ape-like creatures possessed tool making or using capabilities, or other culture or technology beyond what is observed in chimps of today. Again, Australopithecus are apes…with no real evidence they are connected in any way to Homo sapiens sapiens.

As to Neanderthals… lookey, lookey here:

<a href="http://www.duke.edu/~bhj/anthro2.html" target="_blank">http://www.duke.edu/~bhj/anthro2.html</a>

shows some good pictures of what they probably really looked like…could YOU tell the difference if he was standing next to you? I know a couple of people that looks like that. The more probable explanation for Homo Erectus and beyond, including Neanderthal, is that they are all original geographical races of men no different than the differences today between South American pygmies and Europeans and Native Americans, etc.
Neanderthals probably were absorbed through inter-breeding.

IN FACT, some researchers point out how similar Archaic Homo sapiens are to the modern aborigines, who have thick protruding eyebrows, an inward inclined mandibular structure and a slightly smaller cranial structure, and how close Cro-Magnon cranium look to some african and Tropical races present today.

Prof. William Laughlin (University of Connecticut) made extensive anatomical examinations of Inuits and people living in the Aleut islands, and noticed how similar they were to Homo erectus.

Ok...I answered you...how about answering some of mine??? What proof do you have to the contrary???

Later my friend,
Ron

Happy Wonderer

Hi Ron...

TWEET! I must cry "foul!" at this point. The careful reader notes that you have modified Oolon's quote to make him say something that he didn't, and then go to try to prove that what he didn't say is wrong. The full exchange...

None of the links that you have provided in rebuttal(except possibly the one in German ) say anything about Lucy being a a species of pigmy chimpanzee. Lucy as a predecessor to the Orangs, true, "Pigmy chimp" not...

I also note that the request was name a single working palaeoanthropologist. The front of <a href="http://www.onelife.com/evolve/index.html" target="_blank">the onelife web page</a> states:

so that really doesn't count. You have to be careful, we might think you are taking quotes out of context....


HW

Bait

Hello Happy,
Actually...I already had stated one...Adrienne Zihlman.

Adrienne Zihlman compares the pygmy chimpanzee to "Lucy," one of the oldest hominid fossils known and finds the similarities striking. "They are almost identical in body size, in stature, and in brain size, she notes, and the major differences (the hip and the foot) represent the younger Lucy's adaptation to bipedal walking."
(Science News, Vol.123, Feb.5. 1983, p.89)

Oolon has stated he has e-mailed her to find out what else she has to say on the subject.

The others I advanced were contentions that Lucy is nothing more than just another ape, though they did not specifically say pigmy chimps. As far as I know, Ms. Zihlman is the only one that has made that specific comparison (of pigmy chimp). The others back up the contention that she (Lucy) was an small ape, and was NOT bipedal, but rather was actually a tree dweller, and quadropedal. Oolon's contention is (has been)that Lucy is a precurser to human (Homo Sapien), the missing link...mine is that she is not either. He was using Lucy as his basis of evidence...my exchange disputes it. Sorry if there was a mis-conception or mis-understanding there. But the exchange still stands and is still valid (and does count).
Glad your paying attention though...

And since Oolon had presented the "footprints", something else rarely presented, because it is evidence AGAINST.

While digging in the early 1970's in Olduvai Gorge, around Bed II layer, Dr. Louis Leakey discovered that Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus species co-existed at the same time. But that was not all, he also found in the same layer the remains of a stone hut, of which the construction could only have been done by Homo sapiens (or as I contended, Homo erectus is really a modern branch, a geographical race of Homo sapiens sapiens.)
Uh, oh yea, these findings were dated at approx. 1.7 mya. Since Australopithecus was found together with Homo erectus, Homo sapien could NOT have decended from Australopithecus.

Ron

Ergaster

Hi Bait:

Oolon asked me to step in here to address some of your claims, since human evolution is my area of study. I hope you don't mind.

My first initial observation is that you have many of your facts flatly wrong. The second is that you have generally misinterpreted and misrepresented the conclusions of the sources you cite. I will get into details below.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 australopithecines 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.

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....

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.

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.....

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.

[snip]

Oh goody....

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....)

So, like, where is she saying that humans MADE the prints?

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.

The interpretation is that there were three individuals--two walking abreast and one stepping in the prints of one of the others.

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. 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....

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. 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.

The scientific evidence shows that without a doubt, australopithecines 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.

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.

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.

And what agenda would lead you to invent non-existent quotes, pray tell? Besides, many people other than Johanson--in fact, many people who disagree with him, and many people whose only "agenda" is scientific credibility--have examined the fossils, and all conclude that australos were bipeds.

If you want other quotes, I can certainly accommodate you. I even include quotes from articles that creationists use as evidence *against* upright posture. I like those ones! (-:

So what? Even if it were true that Homo rudolfensis was not really Homo, what do you think that means?

The fact is that the relationships of hominids one to another are not determined by their names, but by their morphology. Even if we decide that a certain fossil that has a mosaic of traits belongs on *that* side of some classification line instead *this* side, that says nothing about its *relationship* to any other taxa. No matter what we call it, Homo rudolfensis is *still* more closely related to modern humans than it is to "Lucy", because that is what all the analyses to date show. The very fact that certain fossils, like KNM-ER 1470 and KNM-ER 1815 are hard to classify is a powerful verification of one of the predictions of evolution: that the earliest members of any clade will have a combination of traits of both their ancestors and their descendants and may well be very difficult to plug into one or the other classificatory pigeonhole. In other words, they are transitional forms, and they LOOK like transitional forms.

So what? That is evidence of nothing beyond the fact that they probably didn't make tools.

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

Australos share features with humans that they do not share with chimps. Australos are not chimps. Chimps are chimps.

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.

Deb

Coragyps

Deb: Wow. Thanks!

Ergaster

Some further responses; for some reason, the upper part of the post I was replying to was not copied. I include it here:

(URLS snipped)

Er...so? It's pretty standard knowledge that Ramapithcus = Sivapithecus, and Sivapithecus is probably on the orang lineage.

Or are you still trying to make some sort of association between australo jaw morphology and "ape"? Sorry, but by all the criteria that are important, australos are not more closely related to apes than they are to us.


Sorry, but these sites do NOT claim that australos were "just another ape". You seem to be having enormous difficulty understanding how comparative and functional anatomy is done.

Australopithecines are more closely related to us than they are to apes because we and australos possess a suite of shared derived traits (synapomorphies) that apes do not have. If you do not know what "shared derived" means or its significance, then you are hardly in a position to interpret the morphological and comparative evidence presented to you.

And your point is...?

And this disproves human evolution exactly how...?

Er...what on earth kind of reference is "Nature's Holism magazine"??? Certainly not a professional journal, is it?

Um...doesn't this flatly contradict everything you are trying to say? Yeah--australos and modern humans are bipedal apes.


Well, so far so good; are you sure you wanted to include this?

Addressed in the other post.

So...you just posted some evidence that australos didn't look and behave like humans. Why does this surprise you? What did you expect them to look like?

It'd be interesting to see what numbers 2, 4, 5, and anything after 6 had to say....

Well, no evidence in support of your position here, either.

Deb

RA: Edited to fix formating.

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>