Doubting Didymus

Oho! that one is rich!

Species a less specific term than 'kind'? Lets take a quick look at that!

Species: a population of living entities that can not breed with any other population

Kind: a population of living entities that is whatever the hell the particular creationist using the term decides on for the month.

MrDarwin

The plot thickens:

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=585&e=1&cid=585&u=/nm/20020712/sc_nm/science_skull_dc_1" target="_blank">Man or Gorilla? Scientist Questions Skull Theory</a>

How long before the creationists jump on this?

GeoTheo

So what are the traits that are cosistant with a human? Why does it look all smashed up and glued back together with half the pieces missing like the vast majority of hominid skulls? Are you familiar with the full range of variation in both human and chimp skulls to begin with? What characteristics do the share in extant specimens?
Is their not overlap already? What was the age of this organism when it died? Juvenile primates are more human like. Did it walk upright?
You Guys seem pretty excited about this, but to me it doesn't look all that signifigant. Maybe I feel like you feel when you wonder why people like me get so excited about singing hymns and such.

GeoTheo

Whew! Did you see the front view? If it was a male , he must not have gotten much play, so to speak, seeing that symetry has so much to do with our ideal of beauty and sexual selection. He must have been the Alfred E. Neuman of his day. It appears as though one of its eyes are are about an inch higher than the other.

GeoTheo

[Q]Scientists describe Toumai as having characteristics
of both apes and humans. Detailed study of the
fossil shows a braincase that is ape-like, while the
face is short and the teeth look like those of a
human. [/Q]
The braincase is not very intact, anybody could see that. And I bet given enough plaster I could make the face a whole lot longer and more chimp like. I would say this piece of sculpture is about 75% interpretation on the part of the sculptor. Don't even get me started on lucy's pelvis.

GeoTheo

Quote:
"It's likely that this is a human ancestor. If you ask whether it's absolutely certain
that this is a human ancestor my answer would have to be no we are not [sure],"
said Bernard Wood of George Washington University.

Wow, Now ther's a piece of damning testimony.

Hallucigenia

I take it you are unfamiliar with the concept of "taphonomy"?

GeoTheo

You take it wrong. I know every living thing cannot become fosilized and that some are better preserved than others. But all this tinkering around with badly preserved hominid skulls is problematic. It allows for a lot of bias to be entered into the equation.
It's almost like two people lying in a feild looking at clouds move. One may say it looks like a bunny another a dog. Whose to say?
How many regular old Chimp skulls did the dig yeild that are better preserved examples and obvious to everyone to be a regular old chimp?
I watched a film in a college biology class (secular class, very vociferously pro-evolutionist prof.)about lucy. They showed the site in Tanzania or wherever, and their was a baboon skull. A very well preserved one. Assumed to be very old also. But it was just a baboon. They are believed to have been around a long time and I guess you would say have remained unchanged during the course of human evolution.
So If their can be baboons and regular chimps in the same strata layer that are well preserved, why do all the "signifigant" finds look like swiss cheese ? Could perhaps there be a little too much expectation on the part of the paleontologists to find transitionals? That in turn colors their interpretation of the artifacts?
Not deliberate dishonesty but bias? Is there only one way to reconstruct a badly preserved skull of a species believed to be previously unknown to Science?
Could another equally qualified scientist create a reconstruction that would perhaps just be an exinct chimp that had a different diet and teeth than chimps today? Now that wouldn't be very sexy now would it?

MrDarwin

Your innuendo against the paleontologists is unfounded. The discovery of chimp skulls would almost be more exciting because the fossil record of the non-human apes (chimps and gorillas) is exceedingly poor. The discovery of chimp skulls from so soon after the human-chimp split would be extremely significant.

This is one of the problems of studying human evolution: we have a pretty good record of human evolution, how humans have changed over time, and the various species that have existed, but we know little if anything about the common ancestor of both chimps and humans, precisely when this ancestor existed, and especially how chimps have changed since that split.

GeoTheo

Innuendo, eh? I suppose you think the news coverage of major network media in not biased liberal.

To prove that my assertion is unfounded you must demonstrate that there is only one way to reconstruct this rather badly preserved skull, and that is in fact the way that it has been reconstructed. That no amount of interpretation was used in the process that arrived at what they believe to be both human and chimp characteristics.
Also that the reconstructor had no expectation of finding a supposed human ancestor and approached the data in an entirely unbiased way.
Can you do this?