Posted on 02/07/2015 9:22:25 AM PST by SunkenCiv
For decades, scientists have recognized the upright posture exhibited by chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans as a key feature separating the "great apes" from other primates, but a host of questions about the evolution of that posture -- particularly how and when it emerged -- have long gone unanswered.
For more than a century, the belief was that the posture, known as the orthograde body plan, evolved only once, as part of a suite of features, including broad torsos and mobile forelimbs, in an early ancestor of modern apes.
But a fossilized hipbone of an ape called Sivapithecus is challenging that belief... The finding has raised a host of new questions about whether that upright body plan may have evolved multiple times...
Where modern apes have large, broad chests, Sivapithecus is believed to have had a relatively narrow, monkey-like torso, but facial features that closely resemble modern orangutans. That mixture, showing some ape- and monkey-like features, has left researchers scratching their heads about the arrangement of the primate tree, and raises questions about how the stereotypically ape-like body plan evolved.
"Today, all the living great apes -- gorillas, orangutans, chimps -- have very broad torsos … and people had commonly thought that this torso shape was shared among all the great apes, meaning it must have evolved in a common ancestor... We initially believed that Sivapithecus, with a narrow torso, was on the orangutan line, but if that is the case, then the great ape body shape would have had to evolve at least twice... There are a lot of questions that this fossil raises, and we don't have good answers for them yet. What we do know is that the evolution of the orthograde body plan in apes is not a simple story."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.harvard.edu ...
The fossilized hipbone of an ape called Sivapithecus (photo 1) is raising a host of new questions about whether the upright body plan of apes may have evolved multiple times. "What we do know is that the evolution of the orthograde body plan in apes is not a simple story," noted Harvard's Michele Morgan (photo 2), co-author of the paper. [Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer]
What about meerkats?
Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution.from the FRchives:The Scars of Evolution:"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"
What Our Bodies Tell Us
About Human Origins
by Elaine Morgan
Eventually we’ll be extinct, and the descendants of today’s meercats will be trying to figure all this out.
Ruh-roh
Some of them FReep...
That's an ilium.
Don't they advertise that fitness program on cable all the time?
It's more than that.
There is an intact acetabulum present which would have been comprised of the ilium, ischium and pubis. The pubic symphysis would be by the man's right thumb and the ilium flaring into his left hand.
Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Early volcano victims discovered
BBC | Monday, May 3, 1999 | editors
Posted on 09/03/2004 10:59:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1207091/posts
Good image!
Imagine what their anthropologists will think if they come and decode upon archived Hollywood, Bollywood, etc.
Now, now, nothin’s happened so far.
I’m in shape. Round is a shape.
Looks like a piece of Marlowe up there.
You’re hip!
Of course, they’ll only be 24 inches tall, and when they see those extinct jokers on the screen, they’ll say, “wow, they look like giants”.
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