Fossils Bridge Gap in African Mammal Evolution

Reuters to My Yahoo! ^ | Wed Dec 3, 2003 | Patricia Reaney

[Pharmboy]

LONDON (Reuters) - Fossils discovered in Ethiopia's highlands are a missing piece in the puzzle of how African mammals evolved, a team of international scientists said on Wednesday.

Little is known about what happened to mammals between 24 million to 32 million years ago, when Africa and Arabia were still joined together in a single continent.

But the remains of ancestors of modern-day elephants and other animals, unearthed by the team of U.S. and Ethiopian scientists 27 million years on, provide some answers.

"We show that some of these very primitive forms continue to live through the missing years, and then during that period as well, some new forms evolved -- these would be the ancestors of modern elephants," said Dr John Kappelman, who headed the team.

The find included several types of proboscideans, distant relatives of elephants, and fossils from the arsinoithere, a rhinoceros-like creature that had two huge bony horns on its snout and was about 7 feet high at the shoulder.

"It continues to amaze me that we don't have more from this interval of time. We are talking about an enormous continent," said Kappelman, who is based at the University of Texas at Austin.

Scientists had thought arsinoithere had disappeared much earlier but the discovery showed it managed to survive through the missing years. The fossils from the new species found in Ethiopia are the largest, and at 27 million years old, the youngest discovered so far.

"If this animal was still alive today it would be the central attraction at the zoo," Tab Rasmussen, a paleontologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri who worked on the project, said in a statement.

Many of the major fossil finds in Ethiopia are from the Rift Valley. But Kappelman and colleagues in the United States and at Ethiopia's National Science Foundation (news - web sites) and Addis Ababa University concentrated on a different area in the northwestern part of the country.

Using high-resolution satellite images to scour a remote area where others had not looked before, his team found the remains in sedimentary rocks about 6,600 feet above sea level.

[Pharmboy]

Speaking of the dead Darwin, I will never forget seeing his grave in the center of the floor in Westminster Abbey--the English are the only people in the world who would bury the person seen by many as the anti-Christian in their State Church!

[Just mythoughts]

You E creatures just can't help being so nice, so I do understand how that it is beyond your ability to think anyone would create you. That is ok, it is written that some would be stiff necked and would not believe.

[Just mythoughts]

You call my imagination vivid, have you seen the art work done for and by the E's?

The artwork showing transitioning of "apes" to "human" is so good the E's push it off as "facts". Maybe, or possibly, or most likely, or probably.

Now you have yourself a good day.

[Junior]

Except that the Cardiff Giant was a hoax perpetuated on gullible creationists by a flim-flam artist who used the Biblical line, "[t]here were giants in those days" to pass off his statue as the real thing.

Creationists lack any theoretical framework with which to determine the veracity of a find. Face it, "God just did it that way" can cover just about any contingency. The Piltdown fraud, that Chinese dino-bird, and yes, the Cardiff Giant, fell not to creationist examination, but to scientific examination because scientists have tools (theories) which point them in the right direction.

[PatrickHenry]

Giant P L A C E M A R K E R

[Just mythoughts]

Wait just a minute, you tell a tale with no evidence of a "transition" from "ape" to "human". Where are your "bones"? I don't mean a jawbone of a "donkey", or pieces of what appears to be from a skull. Now whole dinosaurs have been found and if "transition" is a fact, there should be "HEAPS" of skeletal remains for all those millions of years of transitioning.

The E's preach their belief without "BONES" and you dare to demand me to give you "evidence" of a "spirit" body, which by definition means one in the flesh cannot see into that dimension.

[metacognative]

Why do scientists 'know' there's not a steady transition between apes and humans?

[VadeRetro]

E's have a mass of evidence and one huge "MISSING LINK".

Where are you imagining the big hole is these days? Bats, maybe? Somebody taught you to chant these two words, "missing link." What do they mean?

Since Darwin published in 1859 we've added transitionals in any area you could wish to flesh out a phylogentic tree of life. What's left is not terribly important unless you're really into bats.

[VadeRetro]

I am sorry, that is simply not the case. Naturalist dogma is that the possiblity of Divine Intervention as a cause must be ruled out "a prior" regardless of where the evidence might lead.

There's methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. Methodological naturalism recognizes that you can only study a lawful, predictable nature; you cannot study that which is defined as supernatural. Philosophical naturalism says that nature is not just all you can study but all there is. Not everyone buys the second idea. Not everyone even thinks the second idea is important. In any event, the first idea is definitely important for doing good science.

[js1138]

Don't you trust me?

Why should I trust you? You lied about what the book said. Go back and read your original "summary" of the book and compare it to what the book actually said.

[VadeRetro]

Based on this [the Miller experiment and homologies between whale and human forelimbs], they conclude that there is no God.

That's a very curious freshman bio text. Do you happen to recall the title?

[VadeRetro]

Surely, the best way to build a bat's wing is not also the best way to build whale's flipper.

Indeed, a bat's wing bones "should" look more like a bird's wing bones than they do those of a human arm. They don't.

The line of reasoning there is perfectly clear. You reserve the right to cite such as a direct literally stated attack upon the existence of God? No more with you!

[Doctor Stochastic]

Do arsinotheres horns have the same medicinal value as rhinoceros horns?

[Just mythoughts]

"Where are you imagining the big hole is these days?"

"The big hole"?

Now E's believe and preach that "humans" are an evolving creature. WHY?

They have no evidence to prove that belief, and for "evolution" to be factual then all creatures would be in a constant state of "evolution". What is "fact" based upon the "evidence" is a "CONTROL" mechanism.

Evolution in it purest form is chaos. Now I will give those who preach and belive "E" their due, in pointing to the fact there has been "CHAOS" through the ages and one "man's" flood is not responsible for what is seen here on earth. However, "E's" do have a huge "MISSING LINK" which they will not address, just like most "C's" have a huge "MISSING LINK".

What "E" does not address is how the "mind", the intellect be it for "good" or for "evil" evolves.

[cyborg]

Thank you feeling is mutual

[VadeRetro]

However, "E's" do have a huge "MISSING LINK" which they will not address, just like most "C's" have a huge "MISSING LINK".

You repeat mantras a lot better than you flesh them out with facts.

[Tricorn]

"We show that some of these very primitive forms continue to live through the missing years, and then during that period as well, some new forms EVOLVED..." said Dr. John Kappelman

The supposition of evolution is being used to prove evolution??? Doesn't he mean "some new forms appear in the fossil record"?

[Junior]

Vade, maybe this is a good time to post your hominid skull sequence (for the hundredth time).

[Tares]

Might as well give an interesting link:
15 ways to refute materialistic bigotry. A point by point response to Scientific American

[William Terrell]

But wouldn't you agree that out of the uncountable number of transitional forms that must have lived for one species to evolve into another, there being thousands of species with bodies gross enough to have good sized bones, virtually every fossil we find should be that of a transitional form?

No, of course you won't, because you want to believe in evolution just like some Christians want to believe in creationism.