Posted on 02/15/2006 11:47:51 AM PST by truthfinder9
by Fazale (Fuz) R. Rana, Ph.D.
Where were you on September 1, 2005? Perhaps you missed the announcement of a scientific breakthrough: the influential journal Nature published the completed sequence of the chimpanzee genome.1
This remarkable achievement received abundant publicity because it paved the way for biologists to conduct detailed genetic comparisons between humans and chimpanzees.2
Unfortunately, the fanfare surrounding the chimpanzee genome overshadowed a more significant discovery. In the same issue, Nature published a report describing the first-ever chimpanzee fossils. This long-awaited scientific advance barely received notice because of the fascination with the chimpanzee genome. News of the two discoveries produced different reactions among scientists. Evolutionary biologists declared the chimpanzee genome as evidence for human evolution, but some paleoanthropologists were left wondering how humans and chimps could have evolved, based on where the chimpanzee fossils were found.
According to the evolutionary paradigm, humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. About 5 million years ago, this ancestral primate spawned two evolutionary lineages that led to humans and chimpanzees. Anthropologists consider the physical, geographical separation of hominids and proto-chimpanzees to be the "driving force" for the evolution of humans and chimpanzees. They postulate that the formation of the Rift Valley isolated the hominids in East Africa (a hot, dry savannah) from chimpanzees in Central and West Africa (with warm, wet jungles). The geographical isolation of hominids and chimps, presumably, sent these two lineages along different evolutionary trajectories.
Evolutionary biologists think that fossil hominids like "Lucy," Homo erectus, and Neanderthals document the emergence of humans.4 Yet, until recently paleoanthropologists had no corresponding fossils for the chimpanzee lineage.
Surprisingly, the first chimpanzee fossils were discovered not in West or Central Africa, but in East Africa, near Lake Baringo, Kenya. These fossils, consisting of three teeth, dated to 500,000 years in age--meaning that chimpanzees coexisted alongside hominids. The Rift Valley provided no geographical rift for separate evolutionary histories, and therefore foils a key prediction of the human evolutionary paradigm.
Sally McBrearty, one of the paleoanthropologists who uncovered the chimpanzee fossils, noted, "This means we need a better explanation of why and how chimps and humans went their separate evolutionary ways. The discovery that chimps were living in semi-arid conditions as well as in the jungles seems to blow apart the simplistic idea that it was the shift to the savannah that led to humans walking upright."5
If the discovery blows apart a "simplistic idea," maybe it's time for a simple (and testable) idea--the RTB creation model for human origins.
You know, I really doubt they were all that puzzled. I think I'll look up the article tomorrow and see what they said.
Ignore me and I'll continue to ignore you, fair enough?
Come on ... just say it.
A chemist isnt a real scientist, a mathematician isnt a real scientist, an engineer isnt a real scientist.
Only biology professors (Darwinism required) are real scientists.
...
Go back to sleep ...
If this article showed that humans and chimps were always in contact during the last 5 million years or so, it would weaken the speciation argument.
It would have been harder for the two species to diverge genetically if they were constantly breeding as one population during this period.
Is there any particular reason you felt the need to lie about what Strategerist actually said?
LOL
Or maybe looking for a nice place in the suburbs...to get away from it all.
The first human hobby; collecting chimp teeth.
Not if you continue to say stupid things about people I care about.
Or, maybe an early homonoid brought those three teeth home from his travels so his wife could have a nice tooth necklace.
No, it wouldn't, because there are many modes of speciation which work just fine even with populations that are "always in contact".
Furthermore, this article (an editorial by the anti-evolution creationist group "Reasons.org") didn't even establish *that*. It just shows that 4.5 million years *after* the human and chimp lineages separated, at least one chimp ended up in a region where human ancestors have been found. Big whoop-de-doo.
It would have been harder for the two species to diverge genetically if they were constantly breeding as one population during this period.
Define "harder". Is it "harder" to have a mutation which triggers sympatric speciation, or is it "harder" to become geographically isolated? Both seem not "hard" at all -- populations keep living their lives, and thanks to nature s**t happens (without any effort at all) that has an effect on the future of your descendants.
It either happened or it didn't, and mountains of evidence overwhelmingly indicate that it did. In any case, again, the creationist spin in no way establishes that this *was* even the case. They're just propagandizing by misrepresenting the implications of a find.
Whether they do this through incompetence, or dishonesty, or a combination of the two, is left as an exercise for the reader. Lord knows the creationists have exhibited an endless capacity for both.
Oh, I am soooo sorry! I would never, ever do anything to upset an atheist!
Won't that offend the mooslims??
An added bonus!
I just love this part.....LMFAO!
Wow, you're a jerk.
Actually, if you read the Nature article, all they know for sure is that three chimp teeth ended up in Kenya. Creationists, of course, ridicule inferences from fragmentary fossil evidence, except when they think they have something that disproves evolution.
My alternative scenario: a conversation between two Homo ergasters....
"Ug! Ug back! No see long time. Where Ug been?
"Been way out direction sun set. Land of big trees. Big trees, many trees."
"Ug find food good to eat?"
"Much food good to eat. Especially hairy tree men. Ug kill one, eat, save teeth. Look see!"
Well, that is one of the nicest things an atheist has ever said to me! Thank you for making my day.
Sorry to disappoint--not an atheist.
And if you claim to be a Christian, you're making God look pretty bad.
How would that work? If a population of critters is always more or less one group with no geographic borders separating them into sub-groups, how would speciation occur?
After all, wouldn't any mutations in the population spread throughout the population?
Now, the population might evolve, as a whole, from Species A to Species B over a long period. However, unless the population is separated into subgroups, I don't see how you could end up with two different species at the end of this period.
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