[jennyp]

Would these scientists describe three DIFFERENT species? Of course they would! And it would ALSO be ridiculous.

In addition to what Coyoteman said, we also know from direct observation that Andre the Giant, Shaq, and Warwick Davis are all outliers within the contemporary human population. So for archaeologists to find only those three people and none of the vast majority of humans that are much more representative samples of H. sapiens would be very, very unlikely.

Which means your scenario is a fine example of creationist argument. >:-)

[Pharmboy]

Ping...

[ImaGraftedBranch]

Oh, give me a break. I do statistical forecasting in my line of business, so I am very familiar with the math as I do the calcs on a daily basis. Just to let you know, you need a decent POPULATION to study before you can CALL something an outlier. The point I was making was that when the number of skeletons are few, calculations can NOT be exact enough to say whether you are dealing with a representative population, or you are dealing strictly with outliers.

OBVIOUSLY, the three I mentioned were outliers, which is my point! Scientists, in their zeal to find a missing link, would much rather declare new species for the three examples than to say there was a possibility they were all the same species. Get it?