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Ancient Animal Could Be Human-Ape Ancestor
The Centre Daily Times ^ | Thu, Nov. 18, 2004 | DIEDTRA HENDERSON -- Associated Press

Posted on 11/18/2004 3:41:57 PM PST by Willie Green

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

WASHINGTON - A nearly 13 million-year-old ape discovered in Spain is the last probable common ancestor to all living humans and great apes, a research team says in Friday's issue of Science magazine.

A husband-and-wife team of fossil sleuths unearthed an animal with a body like an ape, fingers like a chimp and the upright posture of humans. The ancient ape bridges the gap between earlier, primitive animals and later, modern creatures.

This newest ape species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, is so significant that it adds a new page to ancient human history.

The researchers sidestepped a controversy raging through the field by not claiming their find moves great ape evolution - and the emergence of humans - from Africa to Europe. Salvador Moya-Sola, one of the Science paper co-authors, said the new ape species probably lived in both places.

"The problem is the fossil record," Moya-Sola said. "The fossil record in Africa, especially in the upper Miocene, is very scarce. And the fossils are very rare. But this is only a question of work, and work, and work."

David Begun, a University of Toronto researcher who studies fossil evidence of human and ape evolution, said the Spanish find bolsters the idea that modern apes evolved primarily in Eurasia.

"There is no evidence in Africa, so you can always speculate they might have been there," Begun said. "I prefer to go with the evidence."

Coaxed by a reporter to say Pierolapithecus catalaunicus represented a "missing link," Meike Kohler, another of the paper's co-authors, demurred. "I don't like, very much, to use this word."

Kohler added: "This does not mean that just this individual - or even this species, exactly this species - must have been the species that gave rise to everything else which came later in the great ape tree. But it is, if not the species, most probably a very closely related species that gave rise to it."

Maybe. Maybe not, argues David Strait, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University at Albany who studies early humans. He said the specimen is "spectacular," but he worried the team's approach to assigning evolutionary relationships was a bit informal and needs confirmation by more rigorous methods.

"'Ancestor' is a loaded term. It's very hard to identify ancestors in the fossil record," Strait cautioned.

The site near Barcelona that yielded the specimen had only one hominid, or ape-like primate. Moya-Sola said apes, however, were common in the area millions of years ago. The team has already found a tooth elsewhere and expects to find more hominid fossils.

Still, scientists who puzzle through the mysteries of early human history were electrified by the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus discovery.

"This is a remarkable find," said F. Clark Howell, a University of California at Berkeley professor emeritus. "It indicates a diversity in hominids ... in western Eurasia at a time where we're beginning to think we had a good handle on how much diversity there was."

Howell helps run a National Science Foundation initiative that examines hominid origins.

Living great apes include humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans. The group is thought to have split from the lesser apes, such as gibbons and siamangs, about 14 million to 16 million years ago.

Paleontologists have searched for remains of great ape ancestors after that key split. Fossils have been scarce and hypotheses floated on the basis of bone fragments.

The team led by Moya-Sola and Kohler pieced together 83 bones and identifiable fragments of bones from an adult male ape.

This ape didn't swing through trees with the curved fingers of an orangutan. Nor did it knuckle-walk on four limbs with the horizontal trunk posture of a chimp.

The ape's body design suggests it was an adept and agile climber that kept its trunk upright. To do that, its chest had to be shaped in a certain way and the shoulder blades needed to hold to a certain position on the back.

"Our fossil shows this," Moya-Sola said.

What it does not show is the evolution of hands suited to the demands of such locomotion as swinging through tree branches. That fine-tuning of great ape hands, the team argues, came later.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: 1930s; anthropology; archaeology; bushsfault; crevolist; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; greatdepression; history; irrelevantkeywords; missinglink; monkeys; origins; palaeoanthropology; souplines; thebusheconomy; thegrapesofwrath; unemployed; worsteconomy75years
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To: Willie Green
Just an early relative of J. Fred Muggs.

Nothing to see here ....move along.

21 posted on 11/18/2004 4:06:46 PM PST by afnamvet (Tuy Hoa AB RVN 68-69 Jet Noise...The Sound of Freedom!)
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To: mdittmar
I've discovered the Missing Link!!


22 posted on 11/18/2004 4:07:22 PM PST by TitansAFC (Al Gonzales for SCOTUS? Let's just nominate Arlen Specter.)
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To: Willie Green

They unearthed an ANIMAL? I thought they were fossil hunters! And can anyone explain how fossils supposedly 13 million years old can show the posture of the original animal? I think the likely story is that they unearthed a fossil, and the rest is conjecture.


23 posted on 11/18/2004 4:08:01 PM PST by whipitgood (Public schools have replaced a biblical moral code with pragmatism. Civilization, beware!)
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To: BenLurkin

24 posted on 11/18/2004 4:08:33 PM PST by dagnabbit (Don't let Europe happen to America. Tell Congress to stop Islamic immigration.)
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To: dagnabbit

Yikes!


25 posted on 11/18/2004 4:11:23 PM PST by BenLurkin (Big government is still a big problem.)
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To: PatrickHenry

Ping the usual suspects?


26 posted on 11/18/2004 4:12:08 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: dagnabbit

27 posted on 11/18/2004 4:12:39 PM PST by evad (The existence of Israel would not pass JF'nK's Global Test)
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To: whipitgood
And can anyone explain how fossils supposedly 13 million years old can show the posture of the original animal?

Animals that walk upright have very different skeletons from animals that walk on all fours.

28 posted on 11/18/2004 4:14:05 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: Willie Green

No, this is not a human ancestor.

It is clear from the study of the cranial dimensions which are limited, and its orientation that this creature belongs in the line of democrats.


29 posted on 11/18/2004 4:14:18 PM PST by MaximusRules
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To: evad
Tree-dwelling and savanna-roaming varietals?
30 posted on 11/18/2004 4:15:26 PM PST by dagnabbit (Don't let Europe happen to America. Tell Congress to stop Islamic immigration.)
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To: VadeRetro; jennyp; Junior; longshadow; RadioAstronomer; Physicist; LogicWings; Doctor Stochastic; ..
Evolution Ping! This list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and maybe other science topics like cosmology.
See the list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail me to be added or dropped.
31 posted on 11/18/2004 4:18:24 PM PST by PatrickHenry (The all-new List-O-Links for evolution threads is now in my freeper homepage.)
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To: Willie Green
Thats all wrong...
I have found the ape that is the link to primate evolution..
Evolutinious Scientificus that lives in and around Acedemic buildings.. They are parasites that live on government grants and use tools..
32 posted on 11/18/2004 4:27:41 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to included some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: PatrickHenry
Thanks! I think..does this mean we're all Frenchmen. :))
33 posted on 11/18/2004 4:28:58 PM PST by skinkinthegrass (Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you :)
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To: ThisLittleLightofMine
Why don't they ever put a disclaimer in these articles, stating that these are truths based upon your belief in Darwins theory? They write these as if they were fact rather than fiction.

Maybe because this is directed at the scientific community, which except for an extreemly few folks who make their money selling Creationist literature, is 100% in agreement with Evolutionary theory.

34 posted on 11/18/2004 4:29:54 PM PST by narby
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To: sigSEGV
What's with the keyword spamming? Leftist slobs have nothing better to do?

LOL!
Flying monkeys haven't evolved very far, have they?

35 posted on 11/18/2004 4:30:31 PM PST by Willie Green
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To: Willie Green
"A nearly 13 million-year-old ape discovered in Spain is the last probable common ancestor to all living humans and great apes"

Or it could just be another extinct animal.

36 posted on 11/18/2004 4:41:10 PM PST by MEGoody (Way to go, America! 4 more years!)
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To: ThisLittleLightofMine
Why don't they ever put a disclaimer in these articles, stating that these are truths based upon your belief in Darwins theory?

You know, when I hear about new discoveries about celestial bodies, I never hear a disclaimer stating that those "truths" are based upon a belief in gravitational theory, yet no one seems to complain about that.
37 posted on 11/18/2004 4:59:17 PM PST by Dimensio (Join the Monthly Internet Flash Mob: http://www.aa419.org)
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To: VadeRetro
It's an ape, just an ape!

Er, or maybe It's a man, just a man!
38 posted on 11/18/2004 4:59:57 PM PST by Dimensio (Join the Monthly Internet Flash Mob: http://www.aa419.org)
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To: Dimensio
Pretty sure this one is an ape, just an ape. ;)

(But it's still one from a spot on the family tree we didn't have before.)

39 posted on 11/18/2004 5:02:54 PM PST by VadeRetro (A self-reliant conservative citizenry is a better bet than the subjects of an overbearing state. -MS)
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To: MEGoody
Or it could just be another extinct animal.

The funny thing, though, is how those extinct animals when we find them continue to further outline what looks like a phylogenetic tree of life, as evolution demands. That's important because an intelligent designer wouldn't have to mimic evolution so precisely.

For instance, we could someday find a bird-amphibian hybrid or a fossil thereof, if only an intelligent designer had ever once seen fit to order one. Such a monster could not have evolved under the commonly understood amphibians-reptiles-birds evolutionary scenario. In fact, it would falsify that scenario at once. However, 145 years after Darwin, we have seen nothing like that. What we see might as well be evolution as anything looser.

40 posted on 11/18/2004 5:14:41 PM PST by VadeRetro (A self-reliant conservative citizenry is a better bet than the subjects of an overbearing state. -MS)
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