Posted on 11/18/2004 3:41:57 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
WASHINGTON - A nearly 13 million-year-old ape discovered in Spain is the last probable common ancestor to all living humans and great apes, a research team says in Friday's issue of Science magazine.
A husband-and-wife team of fossil sleuths unearthed an animal with a body like an ape, fingers like a chimp and the upright posture of humans. The ancient ape bridges the gap between earlier, primitive animals and later, modern creatures.
This newest ape species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, is so significant that it adds a new page to ancient human history.
The researchers sidestepped a controversy raging through the field by not claiming their find moves great ape evolution - and the emergence of humans - from Africa to Europe. Salvador Moya-Sola, one of the Science paper co-authors, said the new ape species probably lived in both places.
"The problem is the fossil record," Moya-Sola said. "The fossil record in Africa, especially in the upper Miocene, is very scarce. And the fossils are very rare. But this is only a question of work, and work, and work."
David Begun, a University of Toronto researcher who studies fossil evidence of human and ape evolution, said the Spanish find bolsters the idea that modern apes evolved primarily in Eurasia.
"There is no evidence in Africa, so you can always speculate they might have been there," Begun said. "I prefer to go with the evidence."
Coaxed by a reporter to say Pierolapithecus catalaunicus represented a "missing link," Meike Kohler, another of the paper's co-authors, demurred. "I don't like, very much, to use this word."
Kohler added: "This does not mean that just this individual - or even this species, exactly this species - must have been the species that gave rise to everything else which came later in the great ape tree. But it is, if not the species, most probably a very closely related species that gave rise to it."
Maybe. Maybe not, argues David Strait, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University at Albany who studies early humans. He said the specimen is "spectacular," but he worried the team's approach to assigning evolutionary relationships was a bit informal and needs confirmation by more rigorous methods.
"'Ancestor' is a loaded term. It's very hard to identify ancestors in the fossil record," Strait cautioned.
The site near Barcelona that yielded the specimen had only one hominid, or ape-like primate. Moya-Sola said apes, however, were common in the area millions of years ago. The team has already found a tooth elsewhere and expects to find more hominid fossils.
Still, scientists who puzzle through the mysteries of early human history were electrified by the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus discovery.
"This is a remarkable find," said F. Clark Howell, a University of California at Berkeley professor emeritus. "It indicates a diversity in hominids ... in western Eurasia at a time where we're beginning to think we had a good handle on how much diversity there was."
Howell helps run a National Science Foundation initiative that examines hominid origins.
Living great apes include humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans. The group is thought to have split from the lesser apes, such as gibbons and siamangs, about 14 million to 16 million years ago.
Paleontologists have searched for remains of great ape ancestors after that key split. Fossils have been scarce and hypotheses floated on the basis of bone fragments.
The team led by Moya-Sola and Kohler pieced together 83 bones and identifiable fragments of bones from an adult male ape.
This ape didn't swing through trees with the curved fingers of an orangutan. Nor did it knuckle-walk on four limbs with the horizontal trunk posture of a chimp.
The ape's body design suggests it was an adept and agile climber that kept its trunk upright. To do that, its chest had to be shaped in a certain way and the shoulder blades needed to hold to a certain position on the back.
"Our fossil shows this," Moya-Sola said.
What it does not show is the evolution of hands suited to the demands of such locomotion as swinging through tree branches. That fine-tuning of great ape hands, the team argues, came later.
"the scientific community, which except for an extreemly few folks who make their money selling Creationist literature, is 100% in agreement with Evolutionary theory."
That's crap.
I pointed out the obvious:
"Even among evolutionists there is not 100% agreement."
That's a fact, Jack. Your error in the first place was at "100%," and it's one so common that most evolutionists and creationists share it.
Evolution is a dandy theory, with compelling evidence. When you crawl out on the 100% agreement limb, you fall off into the abyss of dogma.
Not at all. Vade made the error that evidence regarding evolution, pro or con, informs us as to the mind of God.
Virtually every creationist believes this too.
< a beat >
It's amusing that I just wrote the foregoing before reading your link, because the phrase "the mind of God" comes up in both.
Vade wrote "an intelligent designer wouldn't have to mimic evolution so precisely." That's some grade AAA hubris. And it reprises more of the same from him, via the link you provided:
"In other words, no matter who's doing the designing, for whatever goal, the products of their design are wildly unlikely to fall *exactly* within the many and varied constraints that the results of evolution are."
Vade is lapsing into theology again. Why give ammunition to the ascientific impulses of the creationists?
As a general axiom, scientists make lousy theologians, and preachers make lousy phylogenists.
[It's very hard to identify ancestors in the fossil record," Strait cautioned.]
I agree. That is because there aren't any.
That would be a neat trick -- has each generation been hatched anew from fairy eggs, then?
Under "C" in the dictionary for Creation. In Genesis in the Bible its called Creation.
"And in related news, -- Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"
Under "C" in the dictionary for Creation. In Genesis in the Bible its called Creation.
So you're claiming that every generation has been Created from scratch? Fascinating. Has no one told you about the birds and the bees yet?
Hint: While you've got your dictionary out, look up the meaning of "each generation", and also ponder the logical implications of your claim that there "aren't any" ancestors.
Keep trying, I'm sure you'll get it eventually.
He said no such thing.
Vade wrote "an intelligent designer wouldn't have to mimic evolution so precisely." That's some grade AAA hubris.
Don't be ridiculous. It's a statement of obvious fact. An intelligent designer wouldn't *HAVE* to mimic evolution precisely. Emphasis on "have to" -- a designer of life forms would not be restricted to only the sorts of results which evolution could produce. This holds true even if the designer is not omnipotent and is just some scientist in a lab somewhere. In the same way, an "intelligent designer" of computer programs (i.e., a computer programmer) "wouldn't have to mimic" the results of a genetic algorithm when he produces his programs, he would be free to write it any way he wants.
I'm baffled that you would find fault with this assertion, since it's so self-evident.
And it reprises more of the same from him, via the link you provided: "In other words, no matter who's doing the designing, for whatever goal, the products of their design are wildly unlikely to fall *exactly* within the many and varied constraints that the results of evolution are."
Same inarguable point. So what's your complaint?
Vade is lapsing into theology again.
No he's not. He's simply stating that intelligent designers (of any type) have more options available to them than do evolutionary processes.
Why give ammunition to the ascientific impulses of the creationists?
This hardly "gives ammunition" to the creationists. On the contrary, it cuts the legs out from under some of their arguments by giving them a hard nut to crack. The question they have to answer is, "of all the myriad ways a hypothetical designer could have made life, why the heck would he/she/it choose to make the results 'evolution-like', if that's not how life actually came about?"
In short, he's pointing out the creationists' "Occam's Razor" problem.
As a general axiom, scientists make lousy theologians, and preachers make lousy phylogenists.
As a general axiom, general axioms don't add much to discussions unless they can be shown to actually apply to the specifics at hand.
About the mechanisms, not the process.
When one already has a bias toward a 'tree of life' theory, one tends to make successive finds fit that paradigm.
One can't assume that things have always worked as now. In the Bible babies seem to come from people "knowing" each other, just as back in the 1930s babies came from "makin' whoopee."
He isn't talking to me. Does He talk to you?
Well, yes, since it is an animal and it is extinct, it is an extinct animal.
What's your point?
The point is that creationists consider it a point of virtue to refuse to connect the dots.
Or they don't like to admit that human beings are animals, too.
Well said.
There has never been any "missing link" discovered that proved that one species "evolved," a la Darwinian theory, into another.
If macroevolution were a fact, then there should be many transitional "links" between species, found in nature or in fossil evidence. Despite the Darwinists' periodic hyperventilation over "exciting new finds" every few years, none has ever been found.
And then there are people who simply won't see any evidence at all for what they don't want to believe.
LOL! "It's a madhouse! A madhouse!" :)
:') "...with our hot an eager help."
Phillip Gosse doesn't get no respect.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.