Posted on 10/02/2009 11:00:06 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Did apes descend from us?
Skeleton of Ardi, 1.2-metre, 50-kilogram female may hold the clue
Joseph Hall Science writer
It may well be the closest we will ever come to the missing link between chimps and humans and the most important anthropological find ever.
In a series of studies released today by the journal Science, researchers have revealed a creature that took the first upright steps toward human beings and fundamentally changes the way we look at our earliest evolutionary ancestors.
The research brings into question the belief that our most distant ancestors descended from apes.
What's closer to the truth is that our knuckle dragging cousins descended from us.
That's one of the shocking new theories being drawn from a series of field-altering anthropology papers published today in a special edition of the journal Science.
Meet Ardi, a 1.2 metre, 50-kilogram female that is going to cause a big fuss throughout the anthropology world.
In 11 papers and summaries unveiled by the journal, researchers have revealed the partial skeleton of a creature that undoubtedly walked upright like our "hominid" predecessors, yet had many of the distinctive hallmarks of climbing apes.
"It is probably the most important find we have had yet," says Owen Lovejoy, a biological anthropologist at Ohio's Kent State University.
"It's transformative. This is a lot closer to anything that you'd call the missing link than anything that's ever been found," says Lovejoy, one of the primary authors on the journal package.
Among other things, research on the 4.4 million year old creature suggests that humans are far more primitive in an evolutionary sense than the great apes -- like chimps and gorillas -- of today.
"In a way we're saying that the old idea that we evolved from a chimpanzee is totally incorrect," he says. "It's more proper to say that chimpanzees evolved from us."
(Could that line of thinking evoke howls of outrage is some creationist quarters? "Oh God yes," Lovejoy laughs.)
Lovejoy explains that the "hominid" lines of upright species that evolved, in fits and starts, into humans, have much more in common physiologically with Ardi than do modern chimpanzees.
Chimps, he says, experienced much more profound evolutionary changes in their backs, pelvises, limbs, hands and feet as they adapted themselves to life in the trees than we ground dwellers did.
"Hominids, it turns out to be, are pretty primitive," Lovejoy says
"We're pretty much unchanged, or let's say we're less changed since the last common ancestor with chimpanzees than are chimpanzees."
Lovejoy explains that the actual missing link -- or last common ancestor in scientific parlance -- may have first sprung up some six million years before Ardi - short for Ardipithecus ramidus.
But Ardi, while past the initial link stage, possesses enough ape and hominid traits to show what those true common ancestors would have looked like, he says.
"It's the first find that we have that is really informative about what that last common ancestor was like."
And we're much more like the Ardi creature than any of today's apes, meaning they've evolved from human-like creatures - not the other way around, he says.
The sheer babbling idiocy the Temple of Darwin has been reduced to speaks for itself ;o)
How would that work, exactly? I mean, the hippies tried this in the ‘60s, but most of them can still talk. Sort of.
This evolution stuff is still happening. I have this brother-in-law . . .
But the evolution of you into a pro-evolutionist has to be an example of macro-evolution!
If you look into the evo-religious assumptions that go into Temple of Darwin dating methods, you will find that they are just as subjective as their human evolution fairytale.
==Sort of.
LOL!
One massive slapdown was not enough for you today?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2353460/posts
The more educated one is, especially in science, the less likely they are to be a Creationist.
It is obvious that Creationist sources know this and thus play to their audience.
What can I say, it’s hard to resist smacking the Temple of Darwin down when they make it so easy...LOL!
I take it you have made yourself an expert on this. Please enlighten the readers.
If that is really what you think you did, that you have far bigger problems in your life than just being a “YEC”
These “scientists” survive on grant money, which doesn’t come in when or if a large amount of time and sum of money invested doesn’t result in a “break-through”. Ergo, Ardi is a scientific break-through. It will be interesting to see the paleo-anthropoligist community respond to this over the next few months. These guys/gals have tremendous egos and hate to see their current and prevailing theories edged out.
Don't hold your breath waiting for GGG to answer that. He refuses to do so.
“the offspring of Tarzan and Jane”
Tarzan, Cheetah the chimp and a fast spotted cat had
contest to determine who would be king of the jungle.
Tarzan would swing from vines, the chimp, from branch to branch and the chee-
screw this
That’s because biblical creation is not a problem, except, of course, to rabid Temple of Darwin fanatics such as yourself :o(
What do Zera and Cornelius have to say about this?
There are approx. 120,000 ‘temples’ on planet earth, not a single one has “Darwin” posted over the door.
When you find one... let me know, otherwise, keep your pitiful insults to yourself.
No creation.....but, all this matter from an infinitesimally small point that was held together by gravity, the weak force for crying out loud, when a disturbance unleash in a big bang and viola’....here we are.
And they think we are silly in our faith in a God that created everything........BAWHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
God is not mocked, he will take the crafty in their own craftiness.
Time will end, and the truth of God will prevail.
But the time of God is infinite, and the mind of man is small, as you just proved so beautifully.
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