Petite skull reopens human ancestry debate

Petite skull reopens human ancestry debate 18:47 01 July 04 NewScientist.com news service

The remnants of a remarkably petite skull belonging to one of the first human ancestors to walk on two legs have revealed the great physical diversity among these prehistoric populations.

But whether the species Homo erectus, meaning "upright man", should be reclassified into several distinct species remains controversial.

Richard Potts, from the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, and colleagues discovered numerous pieces of a single skull in the Olorgesailie valley, in southern Kenya, between June and August 2003.

The bones found suggest the skull is that of a young adult Homo erectus who inhabited the lush mountainside some 930,000 years ago. The prominent brow and temporal bone resemble other Homo erectus specimens found elsewhere in Africa, and in Europe, Indonesia and China.

But the skull itself is around 30% smaller, which is likely to have corresponded to a similar difference in body size. The specimen helps fill a gap in the fossil record as very few Homo erectus specimens of this age have been found in Africa so far.

Many stone tools of similar age to the skull fragments have been found at the same site, and Potts' team suspect these may have required considerably more strength to manufacture than the small Homo erectus probably possessed. If so, this would imply a considerable physical variation within the local population.

Some experts even go so far as to suggest that a complete rethink of the human genealogical tree may be in order. "Recognising that Homo erectus may be more a historical accident than a biological reality might lead to a better understanding of those fossils whose morphology clearly exceeds the bounds of individual variation," says Jeffrey Schwartz of Pittsburgh University.

But Fred Spoor, at University College London, UK, disputes this interpretation, saying there is probably similar variation among modern human populations and ape species. "It's completely justified to call it Homo erectus," he told New Scientist. "This just gives some insight into the great variation of later specimens."

Spoor notes that the paucity of the fossil record means that many conjectures about Homo erectus remain unproven.

He hypothesises that a Homo erectus of this size may in fact have been muscular enough to make the stone tools found in the Olorgesailie valley. "They may have been small individuals, but incredibly powerful," he says.

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), 'Evolution's erratic pace'. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(5), May 1977, p. 14

Other "Missing Links"

"Missing Links" are vital to the theory of evolution. Even Darwin himself admitted that without the existence of "missing links" his theory would be proven false. Let's take a look at some of those missing links.

Coelacanth is supposed to be the evidence that amphibians came from fish. After all, the fins were attached to the body by thick, fleshy lobes, allowing freer rotation and possibly "feet" with which to walk, and evolutionists speculated that they were shallow water fish. All this went uncontested until one was caught in the Indian Ocean, and it was found out that they rarely come within 500 feet of the surface.

Archeopteryx is presented as a link between reptiles and birds. Some unusual features were small breastbones, teeth, elongated tail, and claws on its wings. Sounds pretty convincing, until you realize that there are some species of birds today that exhibit similar characteristics. And besides, it has modern flight feathers and hollow bones, evidence of a true bird.

The "horse series" is probably one of the worst attempts to prove evolution. Ribs woulod magicaly disappear and reappear and is based on a rabbit. Talk about desperation.

Now, to the Hominid Fossils.

Piltdown Man was discovered in a gravel pit not far from Piltdown, England. It was found with crude tools, and bones belonging to humans and apes. But, what was overlooked was the obvious file markings and chemical residue, making the jaw and other bones look ancient and sub-human.

Nebraska Man was constructed from a single tooth, later discovered to belong to an extinct pig.

Ramapithecus was constructed from a heavy jawbone, some teeth, and skull fragments, and was speculated to have walked upright, though a hipbone was never found. But, a full skeleton of Ramapithecus was found, and it resembles modern orangutans.

Ausralopithecus was supposed to be the first in the line of human descent. It was a small ape skull, and regarded as unmistakable evidence, until an adult Australopithecus was found, and declared an extinct ape by evolutionists

Homo habilis was argued to be classified as a type of australopithecine. Later skeletons of homo habilus discovered would reveal though that it was not humanlike at all. And any evidence of H. habilus that would suggest it is human is because human bones were mixed by "scientists" with ape bones.

Homo erectus, known as "Java Man" and "Peking Man", discovered by Eugene Bubois, was considered a link. Heavy brow ridges and femur bones, similar to modern humans, was considered to be proof of the evolution of man. But, Dubois exaggerated the skull, and failed to report that he found a complete human skeleton in the same strata.

Neanderthal Man was characterized by heavy brows, sloping foreheads, powerful physiques, and larger brains than humans of today. But closer examinations of this "link" show that he stood upright with the posture, gait, and intelligence of a modern person. And some tools that have been unearthed reveal that they may have been smarter than humans of today. That sounds like a regression, and I thought that evolution was supposed to be better, not worse. In any event, they were later clasified as true humans.

Cro-magnon man, like "Neanderthal man" was a more powerful and had superior intelligence. They just lived in caves and hunted bison, like some of the Indians (or, to be politicaly correct Native Americans) do. Even evolutionists classify them as modern humans.

The impossibility of transition

In order for evolution to take place, the creature has to be fully functional while undergoing the change. Bats, who supposedly evolved from rodents similar to shrews, would be a great example for evolution. But, the complexity would render the rodent unable to use his paws for running or grasping, and it would not be able to walk, hold its food, or fly. In fact, it would be incredibly vulnerable, and it would not have lived long enough to produce offspring. Kind of goes against "Survival of the fittest" doesn't it?

Is there something you think this disproves? The theory of natural selection is that up to a dizzying number of variants co-exist, and that the best fitted one survives. This does take time, and the variants will coexist. The debate I'm hearing is whether or not scientists have been correct in squeezing the several variants into one species, not whether no member of the species is ancestral to man.

If you're thinking there's a chink made in the theory of evolution, you should know that "ape-men" have never been presented as a proof of evolution. To the exact opposite, the need for a "missing link" has almost been mythologized. What this shows is that there were a plethora of organisms in that scary grey zone between human appearance and animals, whereas even evolutionary biologists have been stuck in a paradigm of expecting human lineage to somehow be pristine of the fuzziness that exists in the rest of phylogeny.

By the way, I believe the "spark" of humanity will not be something detectable in paleobiology: Adam looked no different than the mud he was created from, except that he had the breath of God within him.

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