Posted on 04/13/2006 12:18:35 PM PDT by Senator Bedfellow
When the famous skeleton of an early human ancestor known as Lucy was discovered in Africa in the 1970s, scientists asked: Where did she come from?
Now, fossils found in the same region are providing solid answers, researchers have announced.
Lucy is a 3.5-foot-tall (1.1-meter-tall) adult skeleton that belongs to an early human ancestor, or hominid, known as Australopithecus afarensis.
The species lived between 3 million and 3.6 million years ago and is widely considered an ancestor of modern humans.
The new fossils are from the most primitive species of Australopithecus, known as Australopithecus anamensis. The remains date to about 4.1 million years ago, according to Tim White, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
White co-directed the team that discovered the new fossils in Ethiopia (map) in a region of the Afar desert known as the Middle Awash.
The team says the newly discovered fossils are a no-longer-missing link between early and later forms of Australopithecus and to a more primitive hominid known as Ardipithecus.
"What the new discovery does is very nicely fill this gap between the earliest of the Lucy species at 3.6 million years and the older [human ancestor] Ardipithecus ramidus, which is dated at 4.4 million years," White said.
The new fossil find consists mainly of jawbone fragments, upper and lower teeth, and a thigh bone.
The fossils are described in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Found Links
According to White, the discovery supports the hypothesis that Lucy was a direct descendent of Australopithecus anamensis.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
True, but then no one said differently.
You want to slander us and our faith, go to DailyKos, they'll welcome you there.
Where do you imagine he "slandered you and your faith"? This should be fun...
Oh, and Lucy wasn't human.
Not fully human in the modern sense, no, but she was much more human than most other extinct apes, something which the anti-evolutionists are hard-pressed to explain.
Lucy was a monkey.
Wow, what a bizarre claim. Please attempt to substantiate it. I'm just dying to be "educated" by someone who lacks even the knowledge of the difference between monkeys and apes.
And with certain exceptions, Men are not monkeys.
No, but we are apes -- apes of the human variety. Humans are *still* apes (and still primates, still eutherians, still mammals, still synapsids, still tetrapods, still vertebrates, still chordates, still eukaryotes, etc.)
If you disagree, please name one or more diagnostic features of the ape clade (i.e., features which apes have exclusive of all other animals, which can be used to identify a member of the ape group) which humans do not also share.
I'm not sure what your point is. Both Australopithecus afarensis and Ardipithecus ramidus have been hailed as "missing links" (a somewhat weird and useless label only useful to headline writers in the news media) and this find connects part of a gap between the two. What are you confused by?
Thank you for your pointless and empty anti-evolution tap dancing. It shows which side has all the evidence, and which has just bitter one-liners.
Before you shell out the big bucks to know what you're talking about, it might be useful to learn the difference between archaeology and anthropology. Just a suggestion...
Not much to go on...Maybe it was a German Shepherd...
Or you could shell out the big bucks and learn how to distinguish hominid and canine bones.
Why do you care whether or not someone believes "Lucy" was human? Does your life revolve around evolution? Sure seems like it. And you seem to take it so personally. Maybe in real life you are a nice, kind, decent person but we wouldn't know from your posts.
Happy Easter. (Hope that doesn't offend you)
Thank you for this very interesting post Senator and thanks also to Coyoteman for your illustration. bttt
And maybe you're unaware of the just how stupid someone would have to be to make such an elementary mistake.
Look, if you have a legitimate objection to the findings, let's hear it, but the sort of "I don't know anything about paleontology but I'm going to hand-wave away the results of those who do" stuff that has been rolling in on this thread is just juvenile.
Nobody believes Lucy was human. Nobody. Where did this bizarre strawman come from?
Why does it always come down to blanket insults?
My life doesn't revolve around evolution (although it depends on it, just as your life does). I just find it distressing that so many ignorant people are doing so much to hinder the scientific education of so many by propogating silly counter-factual strawmen.
Depends from it would be closer.
Because there's nothing to debate. Every week, some new transitional fossil gets discovered, and every day some creationist will post that no transitional fossils at all have ever been discovered. It's frustrating that no amount of evidence will ever convince the bizarrely dogmatic that they are wrong.
I don't. Why would you leap to that conslusion?
I do, however, care whether people MISREPRESENT the facts out of ignorance or an attempt to misinform or spread false propaganda.
Does your life revolve around evolution?
No, does yours?
Sure seems like it.
You get a lot of false impressions. Perhaps you should work on that.
And you seem to take it so personally.
See above. Your perceptiveness is not too keen.
Maybe in real life you are a nice, kind, decent person but we wouldn't know from your posts.
You'd know it from my posts too if you were as astute as you'd like to believe.
Happy Easter. (Hope that doesn't offend you)
Why on Earth would that offend me? Jumping to more wrong conclusions about me, perhaps?
I agree, but the people whom you impolitely characterize have feelings.
Believing God created humans isn't silly or ignorant. You insults are actually insulting so I suppose you should consider it a job well done. And my life does not depend on my ancestors being apes. My ancestors were human, created by God. Don't know for sure about yours.
No, not at all. I myself believe God created humans. An overwhelming amount evidence suggests that evolution was the mechanism He used to do so -- to deny that evidence, I'm afraid, is both silly and ignorant if only because it is so supremely overwhelming.
Well, it has to go somewhere, why not fill one of those pesky gaps?
Politeness only gets you so far. Sooner or later you have to say, enough is enough.
So Genesis is just a big joke to you? I think God already explained how he did it.
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