Petite skull reopens human ancestry debate

New Scientist ^ | 7/1/04 | Will Knight

[Modernman]

I'm sure others will address your other points, but I have an interest in Neanderthals, so:

Neanderthal Man was characterized by heavy brows, sloping foreheads, powerful physiques, and larger brains than humans of today. But closer examinations of this "link" show that he stood upright with the posture, gait, and intelligence of a modern person. And some tools that have been unearthed reveal That sounds like a regression, and I thought that evolution was supposed to be better, not worse.

The TOE makes no prediction as to whether a new species will be "better" or "worse." Neanderthals were a cold-weather adaptation of Homo Sapiens. Though there is a lot of debate whether they were smarter, better tool-makers or whatever, they seemed to lack the cognitive ability or desire to do much more than thrive in their limited environments. That is to say, Neanderthals were very good specialists, but they didn't seem to be very good generalists. As climate changed, their cold-weather adaptations became less important and Homo Sapiens' ability to do well in all environments became an advantage.

In any event, they were later clasified as true humans.

Not true. There is an ongoing debate as to how closely related Neanderthals are to Homo Sapiens. The current view seems to be that they qualify as a subspecies, rather than a completely different species. However, from an evolutionary standpoint, they were a dead end. There is some evidence that at least certain Neanderthal DNA survives on in Homo Sapiens of European descent.

[dangus]

>>It was probably the skull of a child!

Good grief! Have evolutionists lost ALL common sense?<<

This is the problem: Non-"evolutionists" think scientists are simply stupid. To answer your question: there are far more indicators of age than mere size: Structure of teeth, presence of milk teeth, molar development, molar wearing, ossification of the skull, coarsening of short bones, enlargement of cartiliganeous tissue, dendrification. And these are all the things which are simply determined by a cursory glance at the skull.

But, no, you can only imagine scientists smacking their forehaeds saying, "Doh! it's a *child*'s skull? Who'd've ever thought of that?"

By the way, I'm sure these same scientists are investigating (or have investigated) other possibilities such as stunted growth due to poor diet, etc.

[RichInOC]

I still say this guy is the victim of a dwarf-tossing gone horribly wrong.

[Modernman]

Ping

[ASA Vet]

Is there nothing left we can rely on

Yes, you can rely on super-naturalists to migrate to any science thread.

[Ichneumon]

The truth is humans ALWAYS walked on two feet regardless of their head size.

Yes, just as evolutionary theory predicts. I knew you'd come around.

I often feel sorry for evolutionists.

Because you agree with them?

They always have to spin a new theory as more objective evidence emerges that distracts from their hilarious theories.

The theory is the same one it was in 1859. The minor details of the phylogenic reconstruction are sometimes, modified, though.

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

[Modernman]

First the speed of light isn't constant and now our ancestors may not have all been as ape-like as we once thought? Is there nothing left we can rely on with any degree of certainty?

In science? No. Every scientist knows that part of the deal is that any theory can be overturned, altered, amended, revised etc. based on new evidence. The TOE is no exception.

[Ichneumon]

It was probably the skull of a child! Good grief! Have evolutionists lost ALL common sense?

Behold the creationist -- he denounces evolutionary biologists because he presumes that they're just as ignorant as he is (or more so, since he presumes that they're too stupid to consider that a small skull might be that of a child).

On the contrary, there are many ways to determine whether a skull is that of a child or an adult. Note that the fact that Mr. Creationist doesn't know about any of them doesn't stop him from ridiculing biological research as lacking "ALL common sense".

From the website of the National Institute of Forensic Science, we find:

Skulls have a number of important features which help to determine the age and sex of a skeleton. The appearance of the sutures or scams on top of the skull can give its approximate age. The vault of the cranium is made up of a number of flat bones which interlock at the edges by means of striations or sutures. In infants there are large gaps between these bones, which gradually close up after the age of 30. This fusing process occurs in a particular sequence beginning from the inside of the skull and working outwards. It is the state of these closures which allows age to be approximated; complete absence of closure indicates that the skeleton is less than 30 years old.

Age-determinations based on the state of the skull sutures are not exact, but in the absence of other information may be the only method of ageing human remains. This method was used by Professors John Glaister and J. C. Brash in 1935 to estimate the ages of two dismembered corpses which turned up in a ravine under the Carlisle to Edinburgh road. The experts estimated the age of each body to within a year of its actual age, which became known when they were identified as Dr Buck Ruxton's murder victims.

The Ruxton case provided a number of challenges for the team of experts assembled from Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, and the victims' skulls featured prominently in their scientific investigation. Sex differences are notable in the skull, the main distinguishing feature being that the female skull is smaller than the male. The mastoid processes and orbital ridges are less prominent in the female, and the eye sockets and forehead are more rounded. Sex differences are also distinguishable in the pelvis, but the skull, being one of the human frame's more durable parts, is especially significant in this respect. In the case of one of Ruxton's victims Professor Brash was able to report, 'Secondary sex characters are so well marked that I can express without hesitation the definite opinion that it is the skull of a female.'

A powerful piece of identification evidence in this case was achieved by the development of a new technique. A photographic negative enlarged to life size was made of a portrait of Ruxton's wife, and this was superimposed on an X-ray of the skull. The result was a startling match, which Professor Glaister modestly described as 'a close comparison'. The medical investigation of the Ruxton case won wide acclaim, and Glaister and Brash received an international award for their account of it.

Don't tell me.

A closed mind gathers no thought. A clear demonstration of the action of the creationists' Morton's Demon.

I'm really not that interested in spinning more evolutionary tales.

Translation: Don't confuse me with the facts.

The fact is, anthropologists have many ways to accurately determine whether a skull is that of a child or not, or even a young adult versus an older adult. Your continual habit of not knowing anything about the topics and scientists you ridicule shows just how unfounded and prejudice-driven your anti-evolutionary bias is, but it is unfortunately typical of hardcore creationists, who attack what they do not even understand, without even realizing how little they understand it.

[Mr. Mojo]

Concur

[Ichneumon]

First the speed of light isn't constant

Unlikely.

and now our ancestors may not have all been as ape-like as we once thought?

Where do you see *that* in the above article? You might want to reread it.

Is there nothing left we can rely on with any degree of certainty?

Yes -- you can rely on science giving the best analysis of the mountains of currently available evidence, as science will always adjust itself to match what the evidence indicates. Usually these are small adjustments, as in the above article (contrary to those here who try to falsely portray it as some sort of "we were all wrong before"). Even once in a very long while there are large adjustments, but even these are usually extensions to existing theory, not replacements. For example, Relativity extended Newtonian physics to the realm of velocities close to the speed of light, but Newtonian physics was not "overturned" -- it's still perfectly valid for the vast majority of physical analysis.

On the other hand, we have the supernaturalists who say, "if all the evidence indicates something other than what we have in this ancient book, we will ignore the evidence."

With this kind of constant, drastic "evolution" of theory you have to admire those who continue to place all of their faith in science.

Your impressions of "constant, drastic" change in the theory of evolution is grossly unfounded. All of the principles that Darwin laid out for his theory in 1859 are still standing. What has changed is details like whether species X descended from species A or B, where A and B are themsleves very closely related.

God bless 'em!

Why thank you.

[dangus]

>> Coelacanth is supposed to be the evidence that amphibians came from fish. After all, the fins were attached to the body by thick, fleshy lobes, allowing freer rotation and possibly "feet" with which to walk, and evolutionists speculated that they were shallow water fish. All this went uncontested until one was caught in the Indian Ocean, and it was found out that they rarely come within 500 feet of the surface. <<

The Coelacanth is an example of a fish which has developped certain features which would make the transition from water to land possible. It was not asserted that the Coelacanth was the actual ancestor. In fact, there are many fish that exhibit certain stages in the progression from water to land, but which are still not asserted to be ancestors of amphibians: mudskippers, catfish, etc. The reason the coelacanth is famous was simply because of its amazing discovery. For whatever reason, in the 200 million years since it evolved, the Coelacanth has found the deep waters more hospitable. The presence of features which no longer serve their original purpose is not an embarassment to evolutionary theory at all. Humans are found with many such features, such as unused Caeci in the colon, wisdom teeth, a coccyx, etc.

I believed that God used evolution as the means by which He created the Earth. Why else would he create a deep-water fish with an anatomy plainly better suited for shallow water?

Archeopteryx is presented as a link between reptiles and birds. Some unusual features were small breastbones, teeth, elongated tail, and claws on its wings. Sounds pretty convincing, until you realize that there are some species of birds today that exhibit similar characteristics. And besides, it has modern flight feathers and hollow bones, evidence of a true bird.

>> Archeopteryx is presented as a link between reptiles and birds. Some unusual features were small breastbones, teeth, elongated tail, and claws on its wings. Sounds pretty convincing, until you realize that there are some species of birds today that exhibit similar characteristics.<<

Yes, they are called "vestigial traits." And the fact that they still emerge is a strong argument for evolution.

Piltdown man was a hoax. Scientists who are firm believers in evolution figured out the hoax.

Ramapithecus did turn out to be not an ancestor of man, but did establish that there were was diversity in the ape-man tree.

It is still held that humans descended from the Australopithecus genus. I'm not sure what you mean to say when you assert that Australopithecus turned out to be an exinct ape. That is an ape was taken for granted when the Austrolopithecus species was given a distinct genus, instead of being made a species of genus Homo. And of course it's extinct!

>>Later skeletons of homo habilus discovered would reveal though that it was not humanlike at all. <<

That's a fantastic and subjective claim. It certainly was far more like a human that it is like any living ape.

>>And any evidence of H. habilus that would suggest it is human<<

Human, as opposed to, what? An extinct ape-man?

>> Homo erectus, known as "Java Man" and "Peking Man", discovered by Eugene Bubois, was considered a link. <<

Homo Erecti have been found by several people. Java Man and Peking Man refer to two separate discoveries of separate skeletons.

>>But, Dubois exaggerated the skull, <<

???

>>and failed to report that he found a complete human skeleton in the same strata. <<

Suggesting what? That H. Sapiens and H. Erecti lived within the same couple hundred-thousands years of each other? Of course they did.

>> Neanderthal Man was characterized by heavy brows, sloping foreheads, powerful physiques, and larger brains than humans of today. But closer examinations of this "link" show that he stood upright with the posture, gait, and intelligence of a modern person.<<

Yes, Neanderthal Man was quickly classified as H. Sapiens. There were initially a few references to H. Sapiens Neanderthalis, suggesting a subspecies, but it was argued sucessfully that there was no need to make a distinction, even though modern man may have evolved slightly since Neanderthal Man. (He *was* found in France, after all.)

>>And some tools that have been unearthed reveal that they may have been smarter than humans of today. <<

What, a Pentium VI? A Honda that gets 85 MPG?

>>That sounds like a regression, and I thought that evolution was supposed to be better, not worse.<<

Well, that just goes to show how ignorant you are then, doesn't it? Darwin quickly scrapped the term "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest." In his second book, he called it "sexual selection." It's just that his first book was the one that became so famous, so its title stuck. Being more intelligent is your value; evolution has no values.

Plainly, brightly colored cardinals are easier for predators to spot, but to a female cardinal, the male's brightness signifies that he is virile, capable of defending himself, and, well, bodacious. So cardinals bearing those traits get laid more often. (Moderator, we're talking about birds.)

I'm not buying entirely the premise that there were more intelligent subspecies of man which disappeared, but ask yourself who reproduces more, physicists or professional athletes?


>>Bats, who supposedly evolved from rodents similar to shrews, would be a great example for evolution. But, the complexity would render the rodent unable to use his paws for running or grasping, and it would not be able to walk, hold its food, or fly. In fact, it would be incredibly vulnerable, and it would not have lived long enough to produce offspring. Kind of goes against "Survival of the fittest" doesn't it?<<

Umm, bats can use their paws for grasping. The exaggerated size of their wings make running difficult, but intermediately-sized wings can still help glide. Look at flying squirrels, or even some species of toe-gliding lizards!

The feather was a quandry for evolutionary biologists, since they are too complex to evolve with a short-term mutation, and primitive feathers are useless for flight. Then it was found that ancient bird-reptiles were warm-blooded and had "pin" feathers only. Eureka! Feathers were evolved first for body heat conservation. Only after bird-reptiles took to flight did nature find that certain shaped feathers functionned as micropropellers.

Other examples of intermediate functions include Bones developping as Calcium resvoirs. This is most excellent, because by their very nature, we can examine the evolution of bones quite easily. From skin secretions, to neural sheaths, to protective coverings, to support structures, to locomotion, the evolution of bones is plainly in the fossil record. So sequential and self evident that no 7-day creationists would even think to ask why would bones evolve underwater.

[dangus]

If I may speculate on the Coelocanth for a moment:
Mudskippers, lungfish and catfish have evolved certain talents for extracting usable oxygen from their environment, since the edgewaters they inhabit are often very oxygen-poor.

The ability of a fish to cross land is essential if its shoreline habitat has a pattern of becoming inhospitable, so such fish often have fleshy fins to help them scoot short distances across land.

They also must be able to gulp air, or make due in very oxygen-poor environments.

It is hardly surprising, then, that a shoreline fish species might have two very different descendants: One group might continue to become progessively better and better adapted for life on land, eventually monopolizing the shoreline environment. The other, finding itself less suited for what is now becoming hotly contested real estate might disappear to the other watery environment wherein his knack for efficiently using oxygen would come in handy: the deep ocean, where oxygen is very scant.

This is speculation on my part. I don't know that whatever trick the coelocanth uses to extract extra oxygen is applicable on the shoreline.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping. This list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and maybe other science topics like cosmology.
See the list's description in my freeper homepage. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Modernman]

Bats, who supposedly evolved from rodents similar to shrews, would be a great example for evolution.

"Bats aren't rodents, Dr. Meridian."

[stanz]

Spoor...what a wonderful name for a fossil hunter.

[sawmill trash]

If humans evolved from apes ... why didn't the apes evolve ?

[Dimensio]

The truth is humans ALWAYS walked on two feet regardless of their head size.

Well, yes. But that's because when the populations that eventually gave rise to humans weren't walking on two feet, they weren't "human".

They always have to spin a new theory as more objective evidence emerges that distracts from their hilarious theories.

What, exactly, has falsified evolution theory here?

[Dimensio]

"Bats aren't rodents, Dr. Meridian."

Good lord, what idiot doesn't know that bats are birds?

[Dimensio]

If humans evolved from apes ... why didn't the apes evolve ?

This is a joke, right? You're not really so ignorant as to ask this stupid question, are you?