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.
Darwinism and its fraternal twin, Marxism, are quasi-religions: Neither is based in verified scientific fact, despite the protestations of their adherents; and it requires a leap of faith to believe in them. (And, in the case of macroevolution, a lot of circular thinking.)
So why waste your time on them at all?
Exactly my point.
That this is not an 'ancestor' of modern man at all. Sorry, I thought the point was obvious. Glad you asked for clarification.
The first generation of man was created by God. Successive generations did not mutate and become man of today.
Thanks for the ping. You are correct. If there actually was a substantial link between the lower primates and man, the darwinists would beat us all to death with it. As it is, all they have is pictures, imaginations and materialistic presuppositions.
A most extra-ordinary post. In a few sentences you've managed to cram in more creationoid nonsense than I've encountered anywhere else. Your grasp of evolution theory approches absolute zero. Which is a great opportunity for you.
If you have any spark of curiousity, I invite you to read my tagline, and then to peruse some of the links that are neatly organized at my homepage.
But Darwinists have failed to convince me of their "science." I'm looking forward to reading some new books about intelligent design -- and I'll take a look a your webpage too when I have more time.
One thing that convinces me I'm right about Darwinism being a quasi- religion, however, is just the sort of replies we see on FR whenever a thread like this is posted : The Darwinists are every bit as over-zealous, irrational, and intolerant as they accuse the creationists of being.
Reminds me of the way the Left projects its own lies, delusions and distortions upon the Right.
You might read a good, recent, general introduction type of book about evolution, before you start in on its opponents. (If you do, you'll be way ahead of most of them.) Your approach to the matter is somewhat like learning about relativity theory by visiting a few "Einstein was a Bozo" websites.
In fairness to yourself, you might also want to learn why mainstream science isn't impressed by intelligent design. Take a look at this:
The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity," Kenneth R. Miller. It's a very good critique of Behe's work.
Can you show me a mutation (or a virus embedded in the genome) common to both people and orangutangs that is not also present in gorillas and chimps?
Is that a substantial link? If it isn't, what would be?
Examples, please
The skerry team needs to know asap!
Unless he looked like Dan Dierdorf, I'm not buying it.
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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2 more missing links.
Marxism actually finds it's roots in Christianity. It started with Thomas More's Utopia, and found expression in the Biblical communism of Americans in the 1800's.
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