Before you go recommending Lubenow's book, I suggest you read this review of it and some additional information .
The latest edition has the title: Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils.
In other words, the entire book is filtered through the ideology and religious belief that evolution is impossible, didn't happen, and causes bad breath and the heartbreak of psoriasis.
Sure sounds like creation "science" to me.
The major theme of Bones of Contention is that the various species of hominid cannot form an evolutionary sequence because they overlap one another in time."In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." --Charles Darwin
Firstly, he argues that a species cannot survive once it has given rise to a new species. Unlike many other creationists, he does at least attempt to give some justification for this. Supposedly, the newer, fitter descendant species, would, because of its superiority, drive its parent species to extinction.To be fair, this was pretty much Darwin's theory, who was a significant figure in the development of Darwinism.
The argument is incorrect because members of the parent species may live in a separate region from the new species.In a land far, far away. They would have to live far, far, away, because only the fittest can survive in one place.
The problem with this theory is that hominids, like neanderthal, have been discovered all over the world, as have homo sapiens. Additionally, all of these hominids existed contemporaneously, if we accept the dates given by paleoanthropologists themselves. The idea that they never encountered each other strains credulity, to be charitable.
If the species come into contact again, there may be no competition because they have diverged enough to occupy different ecological niches. (Many scientists would argue that even the requirement for a separate region is unnecessary.)So neanderthal and homo sapiens occupied "different ecological niches"? Paleoanthropologist have a hard time distinguishing between these species' fossils (see bold sections below). The evidence indicates that they did not occupy different "ecological niches."
Additionally, it is a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory to claim that a new species is "superior", in an absolute sense, to its parent species."In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." --Charles Darwin
Typically, both species will be "superior" at living in their own niches.
Like the various hominids that paleoanthropologist have difficulty in distinguishing (see bold section below).
This argument is so broad that it would not only disprove human evolution but all evolution; Lubenow is basically asserting that a species cannot split into two species.
Pretty much.
The argument is also contradicted by real world examples, such as that of the 13 species of finch which live on the Galapagos Islands. There is such compelling evidence that these are descended from a common ancestor...
OK, what is this compelling evidence?
Secondly, and more seriously, Lubenow claims that, in some cases, a descendant species existed before the species it supposedly descended from. Clearly, this is impossible under evolutionary theory.Is he saying that some species of homo existed before australopithecines? That piece of information has not been eagerly shared with the public.For example, Lubenow claims that Homo erectus overlaps the entire time range in which Homo habilis is found. The oldest dated habilis specimen he lists is about 1.9 million years old (with a possibility that another was as much as 2.35 million years old).
Lubenow criticizes Klein (1989) for showing a graph in which habilis is shown preceding erectus in time, when none of the habilis fossils discussed by Klein are dated before 1.9 million years ago. In this case, Lubenow has not read Klein carefully enough...
And Semaw et al.(1997) have reported stone tools found in Ethiopia and dated at between 2.5 and 2.6 million years old. Since stone tools are not known to have been used by australopithecines, it is most likely that they were made by early Homo. In short, there is growing evidence of early Homo species which could have been ancestral to H. erectus.
Similarly, Lubenow claims that humans are found up to 4.5 million years ago, before any australopithecines. Before 2 million years ago, the evidence for this consists of only two fossils, the Laetoli footprints and the Kanapoi Hominid (KP 271) (since dated at about 4 million years). This is Lubenow's strongest argument, because both fossils are, arguably, from humans.Sure seems like a strong argument.
The problem is that there is not enough other evidence to exclude the possibility that both belong to australopithecines.So paleoanthropologists can't distinguish between australopithecines and other hominids? In that case, all fossil evidence must be thrown into doubt. Either that, or homo sapiens existed alongside australopithecines. They're caught between a rock and a hard place.
There are more fossils which Lubenow considers to be sapiens, but which are as old as the earliest erectus fossils (about 2 million years). These consist of some undoubted habilis fossils such as ER 1470, and some fossils usually assigned to erectus or habilis. These fossils are all of body parts which are difficult to classify, because other Homo species are both poorly known, and not that different below the neck, as far as we know, from modern humans. Lubenow admits the difficulty but assigns them to H. sapiens anyway.Again, scientists have a difficult time distinguishing between hominid species, that is, when the evidence doesn't fit their theory. Otherwise, they have no trouble distinguishing between hominid fossils.
I'm sorry, this is a scientific joke.