Posted on 06/19/2006 7:08:06 PM PDT by Marius3188
Boo hoo.....
How does we KNOW where they were ALL living???
But... coyote IS a trickster!
Says volumes!!!
Sorry, wrong again. People who believe in Darwinian theory are NOT close minded. And, this does nothing to dispute ANYTHING about evolution. All it does is re-arrange the pieces a TINY bit. In fact, it should show you how evolutionists are willing to change theories and views based upon new evidence. As opposed to creationists - who eschew any and all changes IN SPITE of mounds of evidence.
"I thought about it before I re-thought about it."
(I use Macs, so I don't know a thing about most other folks' problems.)
There goes the thread!!!!
I told you!
Then, there are creationists and drug warriors....(sigh)
Or OLD evidence....
The ape interpretation could mean that Sahelanthropus was uniquely ancestral to a living ape, or that the species was an extinct related lineage that diverged before the hominids, or that it is close to or actually the last common ancestor of hominids and chimpanzees. If any of the alternative phylogenies is correct, the description of ape would be valid. The common ancestor of Homo and any ape species is traditionally and currently described as an ape.Did everyone catch Le Gros Clark in 1934 noting that "The Controversy" in real science was over in his day? And what the authors are saying is that tchadensis is not a "hominid" but an "ape" if it diverged to soon or is itself the last common ancestor.
That man is derived from a form which can be properly called an anthropoid ape is a statement which no longer admits doubt (Le Gros Clark, 1934).Today we recognize that the last common ancestor of apes and hominins was a great ape but not necessarily like any particular modern species (Ward, 2003, p. 75).
Another point which should emerge very clearly from the discussion in that link: it is very, very hard to tell a "hominid" from an "ape" in the late Miocene. Why in heck should that be?
Keith Miller explains it well:
The character states used to define higher taxa are determined retrospectively. That is, they are chosen based on a knowledge of the subsequent history of the lineages possessing those traits. They do not reflect the attainment of some objective higher level of morphologic innovation at the time of their appearance. Also, all the features subsequently identified with a particular higher taxon do not appear in a coordinated and simultaneous manner but as character mosaics within numerous closely-related species lineages, many of which are not included in the new higher taxon. In addition, as discussed above, the species associated with the origin and initial radiation of a new taxon are usually not very divergent in morphology. Were it not for the subsequent evolutionary history of the lineages, species spanning the transitions between families, orders, classes, and phyla would be placed in the same lower taxon (Fig. 3).Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record .Based on the above discussion, a transitional form is simply a fossil species that possesses a morphology intermediate between that of two others belonging to different higher taxa. Such transitional forms commonly possess a mixture of traits considered characteristic of these different higher taxa. They may also possess particular characters that are themselves in an intermediate state. During the time of origin of a new higher taxon, there are often many described species with transitional morphologies representing many independent lineages. It is usually very difficult if not impossible to determine which, if any, of the known transitional forms actually lay on the lineage directly ancestral to the new taxon. For this reason, taxonomists commonly have difficulty defining higher taxa, and assigning transitional fossil species to one or the other taxon. But, although the details may elude us, the patterns of evolutionary change are in many cases well recorded in the fossil record.
When you run evolutionary divergence backwards, you see convergence. The farther back you go, the more unlike things look like each other until you don't know what silly "created kind" bin to put things in. That's what evolution says you should see. That's what you do see.
No. Wolpoff is trying to tell you what he means here.
"Whether or not it's a human ancestor is probably unimportant as far as the skull is concerned," Wolpoff said. "But it's very important in trying to understand where humans come from. It's the first relative we've had of the earliest hominid, or something related to it, but it's not a hominid at all."You no doubt skipped that and zoomed in on this:
"The big message it sends us is our ancestors never looked like a chimpanzee," Wolpoff said. "This thing is clearly saying that chimpanzees are just as different from this ancestor as we are. They are just different in a different way."Even here, no doubt your mind seized that first, bolded sentence and discarded the rest. Lovely quote-mine material and I have no doubt Luddite idiots will be waving it around for decades to come.
Wolpoff is saying that some have underestimated how much the chimps have diverged from the last common ancestor. I've done this myself, apparently. There was no reason to suppose that the chimps have diverged all that much, but they apparently have. And, if they have, then fewer of the differences between Sahelanthropus and humans are the result of changes along the human line, etc. Looked at in THAT way, Sahelanthropus may be older than the LCA, or a side branch cousin of the LCA. It's still a clue to what was going on back then.
Sorry to pee on the campfire.
Keith Miller explains it well:
The character states used to define higher taxa are determined retrospectively. That is, they are chosen based on a knowledge of the subsequent history of the lineages possessing those traits. They do not reflect the attainment of some objective higher level of morphologic innovation at the time of their appearance. Also, all the features subsequently identified with a particular higher taxon do not appear in a coordinated and simultaneous manner but as character mosaics within numerous closely-related species lineages, many of which are not included in the new higher taxon. In addition, as discussed above, the species associated with the origin and initial radiation of a new taxon are usually not very divergent in morphology. Were it not for the subsequent evolutionary history of the lineages, species spanning the transitions between families, orders, classes, and phyla would be placed in the same lower taxon (Fig. 3).
This is a good point to remember, and as Graham Budd has pointed out, it helps explain why we look back at the Cambrian and have such a hard time classifying a lot of the organisms. Stem group organisms often do not fit comfortably into crown groups.
Yes, when we rain on your parade you always have the old fallback, "No one saw it anyway!"
Exactly. The Cambrian phyla show different body plans, but in each case they represent a very early stage of experimentation with the architecture. They're all rather small and simple compared to the variety of life in the same phyla now.
IOW, they look only recently diverged from each other. (That's using "recently" in the geological sense.)
Well, judging from your statement, you either didn't read the paper or didn't understand it. So which is it?
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