Duvenoy

Oh Caldonia, say not so!

First, the term: "missing link" is pretty much nonsense. What we are looking for is transitional fossils. And older and older hominid fossils are being found. There is one, currently under almost bloody peer review, dating to some 6 to 7 million years. Could Toumi (sp?) be the one? Looks pretty good from here. It has a lot of ape/hominid features, but we must wait until the experts come to a conclusion.

But it is not necessary to find that one, definate transitional fossil to demonstrate human evolution, although it'd be nice to have. There are so many transitionals of other species, that our own evolution can be extrepolated.

Ask your friend that, what with his/her genetic diversity, why are his/her parents still alive (assuming that they still are).

doov

CALDONIA

Doubting Didymous.

Your are most welcome to "steal" my phrase; it is not orignal. But of all my four years of college that statement still resounds with me. The whole concept of "race" is rotten and has no rational or physical rationale. I am offended to hear of news that catagorizes people by ethnicity. How odd that paleontologists argue about catagorizing australopithinses yet do not divide people by "race."

Doubting Didymus

I think Caldonia was referring more to the traditions of taxonomy. The idea is, if you uncovered a fossil of a hominid that was an absolute perfect halfway intermediate between Australopithecines and Homo, taxonomists would still try to place it in one or the other, or an entirely new group. Our naming convention does not allow for labeling something "between this and that". It must be given a group of its own. This does not reflect reality, it is only for human convenience.

It's much easier to label species as distinct from one another than it is to divide one into groups. (at least, when you are using the biological species concept, which is heresy to some practicality minded biologists ). If they don't breed, they're two species. The problem comes from trying to take a single evolving lineage, and draw some kind of line where they have changed so much that they can not be considered the same species. The biological species concept can obviously not be tested in these cases, because fossils never try and mate with each other.

Duvenoy

'K. I see what you're saying.

I was thinking of the ancestor that gave rise to both apes and hominids.

It is true that taxomony can be confusing. I run into it a lot in my studies of venomous reptiles. It's getting worse as DNA research progresses. Many of the species of Crotalus that I was quite comfortable with are suddenly being re-done. The same will soon be happening with Bitis. Ah well.



doov