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 Y-5 pattern in dentition surely seems “human” from Australopithicus on. I think the key was human’s eventual ability to abstract information from their environment, such as Neanderthals placment of flowers in the “graves” of their deceased thus recognizing “something” beyond themselves.
All seems of God to me.
“Maybe our subjugation of the human race was justified after all.”
Hey GodGunsGuts - we’re all talking about Obama’s Epic Fail in Copenhagen. Why don’t you come out of your one-subject hole for a while and participate in the bigger world that exists?
“Being that we are the image and likeness, we should expect to see traces of this in both our objective (i.e., bodily) and subjective (i.e., mental) states. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that other animals shouldn’t share traces of this absoluteness, only in lesser forms, as they are “descended” from man, rather then vice versa.
“In other words, in relative, horizontal, and Darwinian terms, we may be “descended” from animals (or ascended, really), but in absolute and vertical terms the reverse is true. An ape is a partial manifestation of man; man is not a “perfect ape,” although Keith Olbermann comes close. ~ G.B.
More: http://tiny.cc/xQnTK
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“Also, a key point is that the lower animals are vertically descended from man, whereas horizontally speaking it is the reverse. Thus we see “traces of humanness” in the lower animals, and traces of animality in man.” ~ G. B.
“Yes, to say that Adam “names the animals” is to say that man knows their vertical essences.” ~ Petey
More: http://tiny.cc/SYz9q
bttt
Then why are the Temple of Darwin scientists saying that this “research brings into question the belief that our most distant ancestors descended from apes”?
>> 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. <<
There is a lot of Ego in Science, I am a bit ashamed in that they are still dismissive of the “Aquatic Hominid” theory which has a lot of laudable observations on where we came from and why. Also a lot better hypothesis on some of the traits that separate us from the apes.
I miss the pure scientists of the 1900’s through 1950’s who slaved away in labs making the world a better place through science. Now days we get people who claim they are scientists but take the facts of the world around them and abuse them by bending them in to fit their agendas either the Global Warming crowd, or the YEC crowd.
Science is the not the belief in Science as a replacement for God, but Science is the applied practice of skepticism and methodical experimentation as a tool to understand the world in which we live in.
We're built for running around central Africa in the heat of the day when any sane animal is looking for shade. Very few other animals have sweat glands over their entire bodies to dump as much heat as we can. Get outside of the 90° weather and we start shivering.
“It is an unsolved mystery to evolutionists as to why coal has 14C in
it,23 or wood supposedly many millions of years old still has 14C present,
but it makes perfect sense in a creationist worldview.”
Ha Ha Ha. You above link was written to mislead the ignorant and lazy.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/carbon-kb.pdf
Radioisotope evidence presents significant problems for the young earth position. Baumgardner and the
RATE team are to be commended for tackling the subject, but their “intrinsic radiocarbon” explanation does
not work. The previously published radiocarbon AMS measurements can generally be explained by
contamination, mostly due to sample chemistry. The RATE coal samples were probably contaminated in
situ. RATE’s processed diamond samples were probably contaminated in the sample chemistry. The
unprocessed diamond samples probably reflect instrument background. Coal and diamond samples have
been measured by others down to instrument background levels, giving no evidence for intrinsic
radiocarbon.
The webpage cannot be found
>> Then why are the Temple of Darwin scientists saying that this “research brings into question the belief that our most distant ancestors descended from apes”? <<
The apes of today are not the apes a four million years ago. The idea that science is discovering may be true is that our most common ancestor between the lines that exist today may need to be pushed back based of newly found fossil evidence. You never know what fossil evidence may be dug up or accidentally discovered tomorrow, but it is a new piece in puzzle that may never be 100% understood, but we may eventually get a general sense in how life developed on earth over the Billions of years this planet has existed.
I have no idea. None of the links work!
Take your pick.
1. The scientists are being misquoted by sensationalist journalists.
2. The scientists are trying to get publicity for what by any logical standard isn’t that big a discovery.
At least that’s how it seems to me. What counts is what the discovery means, not what scientists say it means.
Haven’t you heard, all those Temples dedicated to Darwin’s evo-religious creation myth routinely censor, deny tenure, and ultimately throw out any scientist who dares to propose a theory that rivals Darwood’s origins fairytale.
See the “Aquatic Ape Hypothesis”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis
it has some good points on explaining WHY we developed the way we did.
Agreed, in an ideal world, which is to remind those that Paul of Tarsus differentiated between true science and the methodology applied and politically influenced science, and personal agenda driven goals as with the wonder boy Hendrik Schön. These are people like you and I, and sometimes they need help putting their pants on and I don't.....unless of course to much port wine the night before.
Their is much of science that will collapse due to a failure in credibility due to the a fore mentioned dynamics.
Strange days ahead for science.........
==I have no idea. None of the links work!
I guess they’re still evolving :o)
Try this:
http://creation.com/radiometric-dating-questions-and-answers
I don’t know anything about “Aquatic Hominid” theory, but I certainly agree with your depiction of what science used to be and how it has devolved. It has been coopted by the left for use as political and social engineering. The result is “junk science”. Two words that years ago would have never been connected.
Not only do we need to take our country back, we need to reclaim science for true science, [your words] “the applied practice of skepticism and methodical experimentation as a tool to understand the world in which we live in.” Here-here!
My high school english teacher said man did not evolve from the ape, he evolved from the jackass.
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