Scientists have unearthed remains of a primate that could have been ancestral not only to humans but to all great apes, including chimps and gorillas. Posted on 02/18/2007 11:40:54 PM PST by LibWhacker
Scientists have unearthed remains of a primate that could have been ancestral not only to humans but to all great apes, including chimps and gorillas.
The partial skeleton of this 13-million-year-old "missing link" was found by palaeontologists working at a dig site near Barcelona in Spain.
Details of the sensational discovery appear in Science magazine.
The new specimen was probably male, a fruit-eater and was slightly smaller than a chimpanzee, researchers say.
Palaeontologists were just getting started at the dig when a bulldozer churned up a tooth.
Further investigation yielded one of the most complete ape skeletons known from the Miocene Epoch (about 22 to 5.5 million years ago).
Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona and colleagues subsequently found parts of the skull, ribcage, spine, hands and feet, along with other bones.
They have assigned it to an entirely new genus and species: Pierolapithecus catalaunicus .
Monkey business
Great apes are thought - on the basis of genetic and other evidence - to have separated from another primate group known as the lesser apes some time between 11 and 16 million years ago (The lesser apes include gibbons and siamang).
It is fascinating, therefore, for a specimen like Pierolapithecus to turn up right in this window.
Scientists think the creature lived after the lesser apes went their own evolutionary way, but before the great apes began their own diversification into different forms such as orang-utans, gorillas, chimps and, of course, humans.
" Pierolapithecus probably is, or is very close to, the last common ancestor of great apes and humans," said Professor Moyà-Solà.
The new ape's ribcage, lower spine and wrist display signs of specialised climbing abilities that link it with modern great apes, say the researchers.
The overall orthograde - or upright - body design of this animal and modern-day great apes is thought to be an adaptation to vertical climbing and suspending the body from branches.
The Miocene ape fossil record is patchy; so finding such a complete fossil from this time period is unprecedented.
"It's very impressive because of its completeness," David Begun, professor of palaeoanthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada, told the BBC News website.
"I think the authors are right that it fills a gap between the first apes to arrive in Europe and the fossil apes that more closely resemble those living today."
Planet of the apes
Other scientists working on fossil apes were delighted by the discovery. But not all were convinced by the conclusions drawn by the Spanish researchers.
Professor Begun considers it unlikely that Pierolapithecus was ancestral to orang-utans.
"I haven't seen the original fossils. But there are four or five important features of the face, in particular, that seem to be closer to African apes," he explained.
"To me the possibility exists that it is already on the evolutionary line to African apes and humans."
Professor David Pilbeam, director of the Peadbody Museum in Cambridge, US, was even more sceptical about the relationship of Pierolapithecus to modern great apes: "To me it's a very long stretch to link this to any of the living apes," he told the BBC News website.
"I think it's unlikely that you would find relatives of the apes that live today in equatorial Africa and Asia up in Europe.
"But it's interesting in that it appears to show some adaptations towards having a trunk that's upright because it's suspending itself [from branches].
"It also has some features that show quadrupedal (four-legged) behaviour. Not quadrupedal in the way chimps or gorillas are, but more in the way that monkeys are - putting their fingers down flat," he explained.
During the Miocene, Earth really was the planet of the apes.
As many as 100 different ape species roamed the Old World, from France to China in Eurasia and from Kenya to Namibia in Africa.
not another 'missing link'.....geeesh!
But you've got to miss the good old days watching Gould and Smith fight it out.
Can someone explain why they assume it was a "Fruit Eater" with canines that size?
"OK, an experiment. Sit down and write down in a list EVERYTHING you did in the past 24 hours. Everything."
Your analogy falls apart from the very beginning because of one huge error.
You have, in essence, a "chain of custody" for everything that you did in the last 24 hours because all of those events belong to your memory. There is no question of whether or not you actually did some of those things you can remember or whether someone else actually did them.
There is no similar chain of custody for the bones in the fossil record. Sure, we have have bones here and bones there, some have strongly similar characteristics along with non-similar characteristics, but this means nothing outside of knowing exactly who the bones belonged to and how they came to be where they are today.
The forensic evidence is interesting, and at times compelling, but science and forensics are two different fields. Science is based on repeatable, duplicatable, verifiable experimentation, not a strong inference based on certain assumptions and a preponderance of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Science is not equal to the sum of scientific consensus.
With the popular assumptions of potential inherited characteristics the whole question of origins moves from the realm of science to the realm of forensics. No one actually knows what a transitional form would look like because no one has actually produced a control for a transitional form in a lab. That leaves it all open to speculation at that point, and is why the "missing link" keeps changing. If it was really the missing link then it wouldn't get updated periodically.
We aren't sure of the sex, but, hey, it could be the Missing Link!!!
What's this going to be called now? Piltdown Woman?
Call Tone in Jersey. Hoffa has been found but the egg heads think they found part of a chain, a missing link.
G'GrandMa or so, at last We meet. Papa had your nose...
Probably female. I'm just as right as they are. See those fangs in the picture, I guess they were used to tear bananas peel from peel.
And scientists wonder why they don't have any credibility.
The evolutionists regualrly criticize the creation account because of the meat-eating-animals-whose-teeth-aren't-suited-for-a-vegatarian- diet issues, and yet here we have *scientists* looking at some sizable looking canines claming that this creature was *probably* a *fruit eater*.
Maybe they used those teeth like those juicer gadgets; poke a hole in the orange and such the juice out. Sounds good to me.
Ok, but that's not really the point. If I change it to "have everybody you know and came in contact with make the list". Then, from what I can tell, THAT satisfies your argument.
And, if one had enough outside contact, one could still reconstruct most of the events of the day. And, with each successive bit of input - friends, surveillance cameras, fast-food cashiers, the events of the day would become much clearer.
Some of the "missing links" may never be known - nobody saw you - maybe you were alone.
But, then start examining changes in the house, phone bills, TV audit trails, food in the fridge - and, in many cases , a pretty darn clear picture of "what you did that day" would emerge. And, the Fast food person may remember you - but not have a clue as to what time of day it was - but, based upon the timeline of other obersvations - one might be able to infer WHERE in the timeline the visit to Burger King took place.
And, my point is, just because there is nothing to pinpoint exactly what you did at say between 6AM & 7AM, it does not invalidate the the rest of the information.
Police do this sort of investigative work all the time.
That's all a "missing link" is. One more piece of a puzzle in which you will NEVER have all of the pieces.
Maybe they used those teeth like those juicer gadgets; poke a hole in the orange and such the juice out. Sounds good to me.
Did you think to look beyond the canines?
Or are you so eager to bash science that you just posted the first anti-science comment you could think up?
Did you ever consider that different teeth had (and still have) different functions?
Seen this?
Well, I guess we were wrong /sarc
>>I thought the "missing link" was somewhere between apes and humans..<<
I learned recently from asking some more biology knowledgeable people and then verifying with research that "ape" is a colloquial term for hominids (latin term hominidae) - the family that includes humans. So humans apparently humans are classed as apes even though that term isn't used as much in science now.
This really isn't my field but in looking for a missing link it seems they would be looking not for where humans split from apes but where great apes (including chimps, gorillas and apparently humans) split from lesser apes (apparently called hylobatidae). Apparently the difference is in their "diploid chromosome" a term I don't understand.
Maybe they used those teeth like those juicer gadgets; poke a hole in the orange and such the juice out. Sounds good to me.
The chimpanzee's diet is mainly fruits, including bananas, pawpaws and wild figs. Note the similarity in maxillary dentition between this newly-discovered fossil (left) and a modern chimpanzee (right).
Here's another view of those "juicer gadgets:"
>>The evolutionists regualrly criticize the creation account because of the meat-eating-animals-whose-teeth-aren't-suited-for-a-vegatarian- diet issues, and yet here we have *scientists* looking at some sizable looking canines claming that this creature was *probably* a *fruit eater*.<<
I have not heard that criticism of creationists but a couple of big pointy teeth could be for defense. But in any case this seems like an early article -that scientists all across the world haven't had a chance to double check everything yet.
That's an important part of scientific review - scrutiny from scientists all over the world - that's how the cold fusion success was shown to be wrong..
>>LOL. I've got a replica of a claw from a Deinonychus. It scares my cat.<<
Interesting how deep seated some instincts/fears are in animals. I had two ferrets (just one now) who were never scared of anything - the big one beat up my cat and the little one held its own.
The ferrets love to jump up on the bed especially while its being made. One day we were out of clean sheets and my wife dug out some black sheets from my college days and started making the bed and the ferrets immediately jump up on the bed to be covered (which they enjoyed.)
When she fluffed the black top sheet over their heads the ferrets screamed in terror and ran and hid and wouldn't come out.
My guess is that in the past, ferrets who lived long enough to breed were the ones who avoided big black things swooping from the sky.
So then why are they shooting off their mouths making statements that they're likely to have to retract later. The article is replete with uncertainty; loaded with words and phrases like: *could have been*,*probably*,*are thought*,*Scientists think*,*the possibility exists*,*it appears to show*.
Even other scientists are unsure of the conclusions drawn.
But not all were convinced by the conclusions drawn by the Spanish researchers. Professor Begun considers it unlikely that Pierolapithecus was ancestral to orang-utans.
Professor David Pilbeam, director of the Peadbody Museum in Cambridge, US, was even more sceptical about the relationship of Pierolapithecus to modern great apes: "To me it's a very long stretch to link this to any of the living apes," he told the BBC News website.
That all cuts into the credibility of scientists and then they wonder why people don't accept their latest pronouncements like they're written in stone. Once burned, twice shy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.