Posted on 03/07/2005 3:19:42 PM PST by Truth666
A joint Ethiopian-US team of palaeontologists announced on Saturday they had discovered the world's oldest biped skeleton to be unearthed so far, dating it to between 3.8 and four million years old.
"This is the world's oldest biped," Bruce Latimer, director of the natural history museum in Cleveland, Ohio, told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, adding that "it will revolutionise the way we see human evolution".
The bones were found three weeks ago in Ethiopia's Afar region, at a site some 60 kilometres from Hadar where Lucy, one of the first hominids, was discovered in 1974. Researchers at the site in northeast Ethiopia have in all unearthed 12 hominid fossils, of which parts of one skeleton were discovered.
Sounds like a non-answer. Doesn't explain why there aren't other half-human, half-ape, semi-reasoning/moral creatures around.
Apes might not speak English, but they certainly do communicate through sound.
And another: A brain which knows right from wrong.
Right and wrong are rules enforced by society. Groups of apes certainly enforce certain behavioral rules.
And another: Humans have souls
Where is the soul located? Has anyone ever actually seen one?
I think you meant carbon 12. Nitrogen is the stable isotope with atomic weight of 14.
They're called "creation science" and "intelligent design".
Congratulations on having a reliable hydrogen car.
Why would you expect there to be? Our ancestors evolved in a particular direction. All of our hominid non-homo sapiens forbears are extinct. The other apes evolved in a different direction from us. Gorrillas and Chimps aren't likely to evolve into half-man, half-ape.
Where do you expect such half-man, half-ape beings to have evolved from?
I think we already had this discussion on another thread. The mice who had the 200 million base pairs removed were fine. I suppose the ID'ers will want to wait a few million years to be sure. They always want everythinig to be measured in millions of years. /sarcasm
Welcome to the club!
It's also nice to have someone actually working in the field add their comments to the "discussion".
But likewise it doesn't mean that all except for this one mutuation that resulted in us WON'T mutate either.
Some of the population will stay the same, and provided that niche still remains, the original species will as well. The intermediate steps along the chain from apes to humans either interbred or were outcompeted by modern humans. There are arguments for each case.
But wouldn't there still be some members of the ape species that would continue to evolve? Just because these others were "outcompeted" doesn't mean that the tendencies toward mutation and evolution are suddenly "afraid" to come out from that point on -- unless somehow both apes and humans developed genes that miraculously bred these tendencies to mutate out of both species. In other words, given the great lengths of time we're talking about, it follows that there was plenty of time for other mutations and species to evolve after these groups were "outcompeted" by the modern human, would they not?
Also, I am a Christian and I believe that God created life and mapped out the whole thing.
I do too, and it's quite possible that "evolution" is the means God chose for creation. With minor differences, the story in Genesis very closely parallels the sequence of the appearance of the various life forms that is conventional wisdom among biologists. I don't subscribe to the earth being 6,000 years old. After all, God, being the inventor of time itself, is by definition no slave to time and is therefore not in any kind of "hurry".
I do believe there was a Garden of Eden and that it really was perfect, and I hypothesize that the effect of Original Sin was retroactive in time, turning the original peaceful creatures into violent carnivores with flesh-tearing teeth, etc.
Looks like ALS is back.
I don't believe in Darwin or that the earth is 8000 years old, now what?
And the earth is only 6,000-10,000 years old because of that?
So you're saying one day a female ape was pregnant and gave birth to a human? Sounds a bit more far-fetched than the looniest creationist theory. Sorry, there's got to be some "filling in".
But the little light bulb may go off over your head if you stop to ponder that there *have* been other hominoid species, as shown by the fossil record.
I have actually pondered that at great length, and there is no need to insult me or imply that I'm stupid. But that doesn't change the fact that your answer doesn't explain why more such hominoids haven't appeared SINCE the hominoids you are referring to were wiped out. Are the mutant genes suddenly "afraid" to come out after the previous failure? It seems to me that they would just keep on coming.
That answers your question right there, even though they haven't all survived to modern day. As to why they haven't, ask yourself this: Given man's known ability to be remarkably intolerant and violent towards other *races*, just imagine how well he'd treat another humanlike *species*.
We have no more of this "known ability" than any other creature on the face of the earth. Do you know of spiders that are tolerant of each other? Put two of the same species in the same jar and they will kill each other. Sharks will eat each other in feeding frenzy. Almost every creature
And no, that doesn't answer my question right there, why more hominoid species are not continuing to appear. They wouldn't just stop appearing just because this other mutation didn't work out.
At our church, if we don't regularly keep our gutters clean, grass begins to grow in them. We clean out the grass, killing it as a result, and we have clean gutters. But if we get lazy and wait another 6 months to clean them out, we have more grass in our gutters. The grass seeds blowing about in the wind aren't suddenly "afraid" to land in our gutters because they heard through the grapevine (so to speak) that it wasn't too safe a place to grow. They just keep coming, no matter how many times we wipe out their predecessors. So I assume it would be with mutant genes -- they should just keep on coming.
As I said in a previous post, I'm not dead-set against the possibility of evolution because it could very well be the means God chose for creation. But when I ask a few questions I've never heard addressed by the scientific community on either side of the argument, I don't see the point in you responding with such a snotty, condescending attitude.
From apes, of course. If we came from them, then this half-breed would too, and would be the "missing link" between us and apes.
Otherwise, it has to be the case that at least two female apes in proximity to one another gave birth to fully human offspring, one of each sex, and the two fully human offspring grew up and mated. I'm no expert on genetic probabilities, but I think that one would have to be rather improbable.
That's what docs said about people who had their appendix out. But now we know there is a slight increase in colon cancer because the function that the appendix performed was important.
The DNA that was removed, may have had a function that was not related to the immediate health of the mice. You might find that the decendants of those mice have less variability than normal mice decendants, because that DNA was removed. Or you might find that their defense against a rare disease is compromised. Or the possibilities are endless. We simply do not know enough yet to be able to say that that DNA neither has a function now, nor had one in the past.
But that doesn't stop the arrogant evolutionist from saying so. Even after he's been proved wrong repeatedly, he just simply says, "Ok so that part has a function, the rest of this doesn't".
Of course the transition didn't occur all at once. It probably happened a lot the way hair loss is happening now. There's no reproductive disadvantage to having less body hair, so it has been gradually disappearing over thousands of years. Head hair, too. Harmful mutations kill us or make us unable to compete. Neutral ones occur and don't have any effect. Helpful ones are selected for, and develop over many generations.
So you're saying one day a female ape was pregnant and gave birth to a human? Sounds a bit more far-fetched than the looniest creationist theory. Sorry, there's got to be some "filling in". - Zhangligun
Since the human would need a member of the opposite sex to procreate with, those apes must have been poppin humans like flies.
Actually, I did not know that. Do you have a citation for that info?
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