Posted on 03/20/2008 2:54:39 PM PDT by blam
Upright Walking Began 6 Million Years Ago
Newswise — A shape comparison of the most complete fossil femur (thigh bone) of one of the earliest known pre-humans, or hominins, with the femora of living apes, modern humans and other fossils, indicates the earliest form of bipedalism occurred at least six million years ago and persisted for at least four million years. William Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University, and Brian Richmond, Ph.D., of George Washington University, say their finding indicates that the fossil belongs to very early human ancestors, and that upright walking is one of the first human characteristics to appear in our lineage, right after the split between human and chimpanzee lineages. Their findings are published in the March 21 issue of the journal Science.
The research is the first thorough quantitative analysis of the Orrorin tugenensis fossil – a fragmentary piece of femur – which was discovered in Kenya in 2000 by a French research team. Dr. Jungers, Chair of Anatomical Sciences at SBU School of Medicine, and Dr. Richmond, Associate Professor of Anthropology at GWU and a member of GWU’s Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, completed a multivariate analysis of the proximal femora shape of a young adult O. tugenensis that enabled them to pinpoint the pattern of bipedal gait for this controversial hominin. Their analysis included a large and diverse sample of apes, other early hominins, including Australopithecus, and modern humans of all body sizes.
“This research solidifies the evidence that the human lineage split off as far back as six million years ago, that we share ancestry with Orrorin, and that our ancestors were walking upright at the time,” says Dr. Richmond. “These answers were not clear before this analysis.”
“Our study confirms that as early as six million years ago, basal hominins in Africa were already similar to later australopithecines in their anatomy and inferred locomotor biomechanics,” adds Dr. Jungers. “At the same time, by way of the analysis, we see no special phylogenetic connection between Orrorin and our own genus, Homo.”
In “Orrorin tugenensis Femoral Morphology and the Evolution of Hominin Bipedalism,” the authors articulate that the analysis and morphological comparisons among femora from the fossils showed that O. tugenensis is distinct from those of modern humans and the great apes in having a long, anteroposteriorly narrow neck and wide proximal shaft. Early Homo femora have larger heads and broader necks compared to early hominins. In addition to these features, modern human femora have short necks and mediolaterally narrow shafts.
The challenge ahead, explains Dr. Jungers, is “to identify what precipitated the change from this ancient and successful adaptation of upright walking, and climbing, to our own obligate form of bipedalism.”
The Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University School of Medicine is known internationally for the scope and significance of its research into evolutionary morphology, including paleoanthropology, field-based vertebrate paelontology and experimental functional anatomy. The department interacts with other departments in the School of Medicine, as well as those in Biological Sciences and the Department of Anthropology, through which the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences (IDPAS) is administered. The Stony Brook IDPAS faculty brings world-renowned strengths in functional morphology and human evolution.
6 days before 7th then it was rest time
This isn’t it? ;’)
Really puts some some life in those old bones.
Look at “Ring species” if you want to see ‘speciation’ caught in the act.
Another example of the sort of ‘instant’ speciation would be a bug that makes its sex pheromone using the precursor it gets from a plant it feeds on. When this species encountered a plant that had a different chemical suddenly its sex pheromones changed and it became sexually segregated from the parent population.
That’s just it though, the facts of evolution are not facts. It too is subject to ones belief.
What kind of mindset are you comiing from?
Are you pretending that the fossil record doesn't exist?
Perhaps that the methods of dating rocks and fossils is false?
Those are FACTS.
You need to disprove them before you claim they are merely beliefs, unless your whole life is some sort of weird belief and you don't care about facts.
Do you have any evidence for this anti-science rant, or are you just blowing smoke?
How do they date the fossils? By the sediment. How do they date the sediment? By the fossils. Looks like a pretty good circle of messed up logic to me.
For a bacteria i am not sure the same concept of species applies as to sexually reproducing populations. Bacteria do swap plasmids sometimes which is sort of like sex. As far as a new species of bacteria look at the nylon digesting bacteria. A two base pair mutation on a plasmid that once coded for an enzyme that broke down esters, and now they have a enzyme that breaks down nylon, a synthetic substance invented by man.
__________________
So in other words.... ya got bupkiss.
But thanks for the exchange, incredibly enlightening on the “fact” of evolution.
People who are uncomfortable the implications of this, postulate that infinite energy has been added to earth's ecoshere so that evolution is, in fact, possible.
Have you ever stopped to consider why it is that about the only people who cite the second law of thermodynamics as disproof of evolution are creationists?
And why 99.5% of scientists just shake their heads at the silliness of that claim?
There's this little thing called radioactive decay that works pretty darn well, and it has nothing to do with circular logic.
The only argument that young earth creationists have against it is a miracle.
God changed all the rules of science lately in order to make the earth appear older than it is for grins.
Good luck with that argument.
[Well, spontaneous mutation and natural selection within species is fact. However, the notion that primitive species evolve into more sophisticated species is not fact. In fact, it appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics.]
As a mechanical engineer with a solid background in thermodynmics, that is absolutely false. The second law allows local increases in order at the expense of global disorder. This is why you can evolve from an embryo to an adult, else by your analysis only stasis would be possible.
Of course it’s a stupid argument, but you’ll see it here a million more times by those who want their conclusion, and are willing to make up any crap they think supports it.
Sorry, that is not just untrue--it is laughingly untrue.
This is a fact! It is real, it is heavy, and if you drop it on your foot you'll be sorry! It is there whether you believe in it or not. And all the creationist anti-science wishing will not make it go away.
Now, if you want to argue over what this fact represents, then you have to start doing science--data, hypothesis, theory and all the rest. You know, the scientific method!
You can't just say, "I don't believe in it" or you will be engaging in anti-rational behavior. You can't just say, "It too is subject to ones belief" without providing evidence contrary to existing theory. (See tagline.)
You may not like this beautiful skull, but it is there and its not going away because you refuse to believe in it.
Site: Koobi Fora (Upper KBS tuff, area 104), Lake Turkana, Kenya (4, 1)
Discovered By: B. Ngeneo, 1975 (1)
Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.75 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal, paleomagnetic & radiometric data (1, 4)
Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7), Homo erectus ergaster (25)
Gender: Female (species presumed to be sexually dimorphic) (1, 8)
Cranial Capacity: 850 cc (1, 3, 4)
Information: Tools found in same layer (8, 9). Found with KNM-ER 406 A. boisei (effectively eliminating single species hypothesis) (1)
Interpretation: Adult (based on cranial sutures, molar eruption and dental wear) (1)
See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=33
Totally wrong.
YEC INTREP
Which God’s Word?
I mean, to you avoid women during “that time of the month”, burn witches, or stone adulterers?
Apes, hominids alone and empty handed are no match for lions or other large African predators. Chimps have been seen using branches to scare away leopards which are solitary predators. They have to do it in large numbers. But the trees are never far away. To deal with packs or prides of large predators away from trees, hominids had to organize. They had to communicate. And, they had to have weapons more reliable than rustling leafy branches. Otherwise, they would have been eaten. Early hominids would have needed to communicate more than screeching and howling. They would have had to have a rudimentary nown-verb way to signal an effective defense against a pack or pride of predators. They would also have had some sort of weapons - clubs, long pointed sticks to inflict pain in predators.
Bear in mind Chimps can use tools. They can organize. They can even carry out warfare with other chmip colonies. But they can't walk very well because they need to be able to climb trees to escape predators because they can't mount a well coordinated attack or defense. Bear in mind we are talking about a creature more intelligent than a Chimp.
Bipedalism did not precede tools and language. There is no evolutionary means for it to develop if all hominids have is to be eaten up on the plains. Tools and language preceded bipedalism.
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