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.

[Just mythoughts]

HOW MANY HOMINID SKULLS have been discovered?

I have seeeeeeeeeeeeeen pictures, "ARTWORK" of sequence, and the same "freaking" bone is used.

IF E is a FACT there should be MOUNTAINS of "BONES" not one or two bones presented as the "LINK".

[Junior]

Vade has a photographic sequence of quite a few hominid skulls. Of course, even though he's posted them about a jillion times on these threads, you've never seen them. Even after he posts it on this thread you'll conveniently never see them.

[Just mythoughts]

Interesting what you call "mantras". I am not the one who came up with the "MISSING LINK" mantra.

You expect under the "E's" "mantra" of sequential transition pictures, with no bones, to give evidence to be called "FACT".

I look at what is evident, what the Bible does in "FACT" say and the evidence does not dispute what is Written, in fact the evidence proves what is WRITTEN.

HAVE YOU NOT READ?

[Just mythoughts]

So you know what I have seen? Evolved well past the rest of the hominids. So is this what the future in evolution holds, "reading minds"?

Now exactly HOW many hominid skulls have been found?

[Hunble]

virtually every fossil we find should be that of a transitional form?

Yes and no, depending upon your definition of a transitional form.

It is not possible to have a transitional form between two species, since a genetic modification is binary. You have either have it, or you do not.

Within a family, each species will be closely related to each other. There, you will find many transitional species between the oldest and more recent along a time-line.

That is like stating that there are no transitional forms between male and female children in a family. Yes, that is very true and factual. However, they do share a common set of parents and are closely related.

As with the difference between male and female, you are one or the other. There are no transitional forms and it would be impossible to find any fossils of them.

[VadeRetro]

You expect under the "E's" "mantra" of sequential transition pictures, with no bones, to give evidence to be called "FACT".

This is a joke at so many levels. Level One:

Linked to this thread already:

Source. These are not the only pictures in existence, by the way. What you noisily demand from others, you could have looked into for yourself had you the slightest curiosity to know if there existed evidence against your position. That of course would be a very un-creationist thing to do and you didn't do it. Then, the odds were incredibly against. At the seminars that crank out cookie-cutter cloned mantra-chanters, they teach you to be dragged kicking, screaming, and professing ignorance.

Level two is coming next. It doesn't matter what bones are provided. Your demand is empty, posturing for the lurkers. There are stupid lawyering tricks to make any amount of unwanted bones go away.

[VadeRetro]

I have seeeeeeeeeeeeeen pictures, "ARTWORK" of sequence, and the same "freaking" bone is used.

The limitations of a Jack Chick education are your problem, really.

[js1138]

Here is your paraphrase of the book:

To make it even worse, the book goes on to point out that there are (unarguable, in my opinion) similarities between construction of a whale fin and a human hand. Based on this, they conclude that there is no God. Somewhere, between a fact (anatomical similarity) and a conclusion (there is no God) is a leap of logic that I simply could not penetrate.

And here, according to you, is what the book actually said:

Descent with modification is evident in anatomical similarities between species grouped in the same taxonomic category. For example, many of the same skeletal elements make up the forelimbs of humans, cats, whales, bats, and all other mammals, although these appendages have very different functions (figure 22.9). Surely, the best way to build a bat's wing is not also the best way to build whale's flipper. Such anatomical peculiarities make no sense if the structures are uniquely engineered and unrelated."

I have no intention or hope of making you see the point. I merely put the case before the lurkers. I trust them to form their own conclusion. But it is interesting to observe what leaps of logic you are willing to make.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution is not the only hoax being forced upon our society by "scientists" with an evil agenda:

The scientific case against Craterism

1. Meteor craters are not observed to be happening now.
2. Meteor craters have not been observed to happen in the past.
3. Thomas Jefferson said: "Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven."
4. The odds against a rock falling from the sky in a random fashion and making a crater are astronomical.
5. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits meteor craters.
6. Meteor craters are not mentioned in the bible, and are thus blasphemy.
7. Meteor craters have never been reproduced in the lab, and are thus not scientific.
8. Belief that rocks can fall from the sky promotes hedonism and animalistic, amoral behavior.
9. Craterism is a product of materialism and a naturalistic worldview.
10. Craterism makes no predictions and is untestable; it is therefore not scientific.
11. Craterists point to evidence of micro-cratering, but have no evidence of macro-cratering.
12. Scientists are abandoning craterism because they know it is not supported by evidence.

[general_re]

Every new fossil that's found creates two new "gaps" that the C's can point to...

[fish hawk]

Carl Sagan is in Hell right now trying to convince Satan that Evolution is a "Fact".

[VadeRetro]

The hominid skulls are at TalkOrigins for anybody to use, apparently. (Nice they don't block links the way some sites do.)

And, before anybody takes off on T.O., they simply compile and present the real research in biology/paleontogy. You'll see the claim from the mouth-foamers that they're making it all up or something.

The gimmick here is that if science ignores the creationists, that's evidence of conspiracy. However, anyone who bothers to answer the creationists is some kind of Satanist materialist and may be dismissed for bias.

[PatrickHenry]

Craterist dog! Admit it. You spread the Satanic belief that rocks fall from the sky.

[VadeRetro]

Every new fossil that's found creates two new "gaps" that the C's can point to...

And Piltdown Man, discovered 1912, was a fake. (So true, and it always will be.) And no fossil has been found morphing into anything else. (So true, they all just lay there.)

[Just mythoughts]

Hey wait a minute, call me stupid, call my education limited all you want, that does not change the problem you have.

Now there is a long, long, list of things I could say about you, and what you "CHOOSE" to believe.

You are "FREE" as it is WRITTEN to CHOOSE to believe anything you CHOOSE to. I cannot alter the traces etched in your mind to "SEE" anything different than what you have been programmed to believe.

So the best you can offer are insults, to seek credibility for your belief, a "religion". No "heaps" of "SKULLS" or "skeletal remains" just artwork and words, quite a fairy tale you got going there.

[VadeRetro]

You spread the Satanic belief that rocks fall from the sky.

I've called several down myself in Satanic rituals with the Hillary-Witch. (Note to creationists: the preceding is sarcasm.)

[VadeRetro]

No "heaps" of "SKULLS" or "skeletal remains" just artwork and words, quite a fairy tale you got going there.

Junior predicted you in advance very well.

[Just mythoughts]

Junior apparently has reached the pinnacle of evolution.

Last phase before the "crash and burn" AGE, "mind readers".

[general_re]

Pretty much. If you have A & C, they'll ask you where B is. Find B, and they'll ask you for the things that come between A & B, and B & C. Find those, and they'll ask you...

Expect to be arguing about "transitionals" unto the end of time ;)

[VadeRetro]

I'm going out for a bit here to join the panic-shoppers the day before the snow hits. You might use the time to force yourself to look at post 146. So far, you're making Junior look like an absolute seer. He said you wouldn't see the skulls even when they were posted.