Godless Dave

I'd like to be able to offer a quick answer to cretinists who ask "Where is the missing link?" Do we have fossil evidence of an ancestor species from which hominids and great apes diverged?

Amen-Moses

Depends on what you class as hominid.

The last common ancestor of all the great apes, including us as we are one, would be around 16-20 million years ago.

But it is impossible to point at any fossil primate from 16-20 MYA and say "that's it" as it may or may not be in the lineage, the closest we can get is to say that the fossil is closely related.

Amen-Moses

Godless Dave

Can you give me some examples of fossil primates from that era? Or am I going to have to go to all the hard work of googling on my own?

Ergaster

No.

However, there are candidates that likely are representatives of the lineage from which humans and apes diverged, and these (curiously enough) are in Europe. So far, morphological, biogeographical, and cladistic analyses seem to point to either the big Greek hominid Ouranopithecus or the Hungarian/Spanish hominid Dryopithecus as being the closest extinct relatives to the African great ape+hominin clade. The dates on these fossils are around 14 million years ago. These hominids arose after the origin of the separate orangutan clade, represented by the fossil apes Sivapithecus, Lufengpithecus, Ankarapithecus, and Gigantopithecus.

There are no fossil candidates for the closest sister-taxon to African great apes +hominins in Africa. There *are* extinct African hominoids, of course, but they are either too primitive to be the closest relative to the modern group, or they are just too fragmentary to tell.

The best candidate for the earliest hominin *after* the chimp lineage split is Ardipithecus. Despite all the clamor by the respective discoverers about Sahelanthropus and Orrorin as "ancestors", the evidence remains ambiguous and they have not been fully studied yet.

Check out the latest issue of Scientific American for an article (written by my prof-- shameless plug ) for more details on just this subject. I can probably give you more details about most of what is in that article, if you have questions.

Oolon Colluphid

Nope, just which SciAm edition the article is in please! I picked up a recent special edition entirely on human evolution, but haven’t read it all yet (am halfway through the new Bill Bryson )... Is it that? Who’s your prof?

Cheers, Oolon

Ergaster

Latest regular issue on the stands now (not a special edition)--August 2003. The article starts on page 74 and is called "Planet of the Apes", by David R. Begun.

I like Bryson, but I've heard equivocal reviews of his latest. How is it?

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks, I'll look out for it.
Briefly, so as not to derail the thread: the reviews are likely to be mixed, because ‘Bryson readers’ are used to travel writings. Whereas A Short History of Nearly Everything is pop science.

It’s an overview of what we know (and don’t) about the universe and our corner of it, and a how-we-know-what-we-know (and don’t). And it’s great. Very well written, of course, and covering such a wide range of stuff (ie ‘nearly everything’) that nearly everyone will learn something. It’s very superficial, obviously, and highly anecdotal / biographical of all the people who’ve gained us this knowledge... but that’s what makes it fun and fascinating. It’s also the only sciency book I’ve ever laughed out loud at -- and frequently. (Science of Discworld doesn’t count, because the funny bits are mainly in the Pratchett / Discworld chapters.)

I’ve not made it into the biology / life half yet, so can’t vouch for its accuracy (like I’d know!), but Bryson seems to have consulted plenty of relevant people. The bibliography gives the game away: this is a distillation of a huge range of other popular science books, with a lot of help from the experts.

I’d say it’s a great place for non-science readers to start, and excellent recreational reading for those who know their science. And it’s great that someone with Bryson’s huge readership has come out so strongly pro-science. If science is a candle in the dark, this book is a lantern to put it in, to spread some light further than it might otherwise reach.

Cheers, Oolon

Amen-Moses

There was one found recently from 6.1 MYA which walked upright and had the brain size of a modern chimp, that could be construde as the earliest true hominid yet found and shouldn't be to difficult to find with Google, unfortunately it was nowhere near a whole skeleton so it won't impress any cretinists.

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses

http://africanhistory.about.com/gi/d...00/1157536.stm

Amen-Moses

Nialler

I've been having fun with some creto's recently who couldn't seem to accept that the fossil record can and does contain gaps - that it is not inevitable that specimens of every species to have lived will have obligingly left clear proof of their existence.

I realised recently that there's more fun to be had by letting them believe that every species leaves fossils before asking them for the fossils of the giants that roamed the Earth before the fall.

What's sauce for the goose...