Posted on 03/07/2005 3:19:42 PM PST by Truth666
A joint Ethiopian-US team of palaeontologists announced on Saturday they had discovered the world's oldest biped skeleton to be unearthed so far, dating it to between 3.8 and four million years old.
"This is the world's oldest biped," Bruce Latimer, director of the natural history museum in Cleveland, Ohio, told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, adding that "it will revolutionise the way we see human evolution".
The bones were found three weeks ago in Ethiopia's Afar region, at a site some 60 kilometres from Hadar where Lucy, one of the first hominids, was discovered in 1974. Researchers at the site in northeast Ethiopia have in all unearthed 12 hominid fossils, of which parts of one skeleton were discovered.
How about consciousness ?
You should have stopped while you were behind.
The anthropologists tell the geologists how old they think the fossils are, so the geologists date the layers accordingly.
You're lying. Please explain why, and try to justify your actions. We'll wait.
Actually, the labs that perform radiometric dating on samples which are sent to them aren't "told" anything about the "expected" age of the samples. They just process the samples and read out the results which the machines produce based on the measured isotope ratios, then mail the results back to the folks who submitted the samples.
You clearly have never actually done any dating of samples (either as a submitter or as an analayst), but I note that this doesn't stop you from shooting your mouth off as if you actually knew what you were talking about, even though you do not.
That's typical for creationists, though, who show all the humility of gradeschoolers lecturing quantum physicists.
Then the geologists tell the anthropologists how old that layer is when new fossils are found.
Wrong again. From where did you gain your erroneous "knowledge" of science? Let me guess -- creationist pamphlets?
The biggest circle jerk ever.
You appear to be doing more of that sort of activity than those whom you accuse.
Why don't you go off and actually learn some real science before you try again?
BTW, I believe that God created the Universe and that evolution is part of His plan. Somebody's gotta be at the top of the food chain...
That's only because you're gullible enough to believe all the creationist lies about it.
And they call you names if you don't swallow it!
No, we call you names (like gullible, ignorant, and so on) when you keep attacking established science based on the dishonesties of the anti-evolution hucksters, without bothering to actually learn anything about the field you're rabidly attacking.
You're making fools of yourselves, like the Michael Moore parrots make fools of themselves on the other side of the political fence.
And you're doing the conservative cause a huge disservice by acting like anti-scientific loons. The knee-jerk creationists are worse than the global-warming enviro-nuts.
Contamination would clearly show up in the isochrons, so yes, they can be pretty sure of the date. Note that the creationist websites keep "forgetting" to mention this when they attempt to dishonestly malign radiometric dating.
More Creationist ignorance. We didn't evolve from apes; we're related to them.
Sorry, but I can't hear you. I don't speak your language. By the way, my geneology does not show anything resembling an ape in it. If I was related to an ape I am sure that it should show up. Or are you considering since an ape eats and humans eat we are related? Kind of weak.
I've lost count of the number of times that you've made the mistake of thinking that your personal incredulity and/or lack of knowledge actually counts as any kind of support for what you'd like to believe...
And yet again you've managed to pack many misconceptions into a single sentence -- quite a feat, but one you frequently achieve.
First, it is in no way accurate to label the hominids 4,000,000 years ago as "man", as you have mistakenly done so here. Just because an ape walks upright, that doesn't make him a man, although for some bizarre reason you seem to think that it does. Humans as we know them are no more than a few hundred thousand years old.
Second, you assert that early men and proto-men "didn't manage to leave a significant trace" -- this is utter nonsense.
Finally, you try to imply that modern humans "didn't manage to leave a significant trace until the last 6,000-10,000 years". Again, you're just being goofily ignorant. Countless stone tools, campfires, cave paintings, etc. have been found from well over 10,000 years ago, and indeed ranging up to several hundreds of thousands of years.
As for why mankind took a seemingly long time to develop agriculture, modern city-states, writing, etc., go learn something for a change and read Jared Diamond's Pulitzer-prize-winning book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies". It's a remarkable book which is highly educational in many different ways, but one of the (many) issues it addresses will be a useful remedy to your current ill-informed incredulity: The author examines why agriculture, alphabets, nation-states, etc. are all much "harder" to start "from scratch", for many reasons, than might be immediately apparent.
The real surprise isn't how long it took mankind to develop these achievements -- it's that we ever did so at all (especially when the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was so successful for us for so long).
"I think I prefer the theory that aliens dropped us here a few thousand years ago..."
Well, that's what Francis Crick believed. (Co-discoverer of DNA). He understood how complicated DNA is and figured this couldn't have just happened by chance. There must have been a creator. In his case, it meant aliens putting the "code of life" into DNA and somehow sending it out to "seed" new planets with life.
Perhaps the Nephalim tracked it in on their shoes. ;-)
This is just goofy, Danny. A "lot of DNA" was called "junk DNA" not because "evolution" called it that (you're not even making any *sense* there), but because there was good evidenciary reason to conclude that it served no function. And there still is. Nonetheless, contrary to your cartoon version of science (your scenarios are all remarkably childish and bear little if any resemblance to the reality), it's not like "evolution" pronounced that certain DNA was "junk" and then scientists "listened" to that pronouncement and ignored it thereafter but certain other "scientists" refused to "listen" and conducted clandestine research and discovered otherwise... (*sheesh*, man...).
Instead, research advances on "junk DNA" has been done the way science is always done -- by various scientists following various lines of evidence and fortuitous discoveries wherever they lead, without any "listening to" or "not listening to" prior provisional conclusions.
Please learn something about how science is done before you again misrepresent it, please. Bearing false witness in the way you frequently do is inexcusable.
Furthermore, contrary to your implications, the vast majority of what is considered "junk DNA" still *is* known to be junk, and has been confirmed as such in multiple different ways.
Evolution called various human organs and features "vestigal" and some medical people believed them. We now know that there are no vestigal organs in the human body that do not have function.
This is just ridiculous. You have again misrepresented both how science is done, as well as the history of medical understanding of certain organs.
But worse, you grossly misunderstand and misrepresent the nature of vestigial organs -- there is *no* requirement that they actually "do not have a function" in order to be classified as vestigial. Are you sure you know what in the hell you're talking about?
Furthermore, you're wrong when you say that "there are no vestigal organs in the human body that do not have function" -- an obvious counterexample is "wisdom teeth". Their sole function seems to be enriching oral surgeons.
Finally, you were dishonestly trying to divert attention from many obvious examples by specifying "in the human body" in your screed. For example, there are beetle species which have fully formed wings forever trapped under fused wing cases, Mexican tetra fish have a lens, a degenerate retina, a degenerate optic nerve, and a sclera, even though the fish is blind.
Yes Virginia, there *are* vestigial features...
Evolution really contributes very little to science and the study of God's design. In some cases it actually gets in the way.
You can believe that fairy tale if you wise. I'll stick with reality.
Might I suggest to you that those of us who are working our asses off finding oil aren't fooling around with any ankle bones?
For the same reason that there are still other breeds of dogs despite new breeds being developed -- or more to the point, for the same reason that there are still wolves despite the fact that domestic dogs were bred from them.
Or better yet, why aren't there creatures on the earth right now that are in a state of evolution a quarter of the way, half-way, or 3/4ths of the way between an ape and a human?
Because that's not what evolution requires. Are you sure you actually understand it well enough to ask sensible questions about it? Quick, why is there not a dog "half-way" between a dachshund and a beagle? *Think*, man.
Wouldn't we have some primate like that living somewhere in the world, with which we could communicate and reason on a level not quite human but advanced significantly beyond the other primates? Something that maybe even has a partially developed moral sense?
Not necessarily, no. Evolution is not required to "fill in" between divergent species.
But the little light bulb may go off over your head if you stop to ponder that there *have* been other hominoid species, as shown by the fossil record. That answers your question right there, even though they haven't all survived to modern day. As to why they haven't, ask yourself this: Given man's known ability to be remarkably intolerant and violent towards other *races*, just imagine how well he'd treat another humanlike *species*.
Or did evolution just suddenly stop?
Of course not, why do you ask? (Hint: This question of yours is a non sequitur to your other questions.)
The article does not say that "we" have been here four million years. It says that some *hominid* (i.e. bipedal creature) was here that long ago. That's not the same as saying that humans have been -- nor is there any evidence that we *have* been here anywhere near that long.
Did the guy have an expired dry cleaning receipt in his pocket? Where are the signs that this guy or anybody else existed?
You mean besides the fact that bones don't spontaneously form absent an existing animal?
Its a little suspicious that we have managed to evolve society so far in the past couple thousand years while we did virtually nothing for nearly 4,000,000?
See my earlier reply to DannyTN on that same topic.
And physically we are virtually unchanged in the past couple thousand years but we were freaking fish only 10,000,000 years ago?
Um, no -- from what Cracker Jack box did you acquire your "education" on this topic? Ten million years ago "we" (well, our ancestors) had barely split from the chimpanzee clade. Apes split from monkeys around thirty million years ago. The early primates split from other mammals around sixty million years ago. Mammals split from reptiles around 250 million years ago. Reptiles split from amphibians around 320 million years ago. Amphibians split from fish around 400 million years ago.
So you have made a 40-fold understatement of the amount of time since our last common ancestor with fish.
Something about all this smells.
I submit that it's your science education.
I think I prefer the theory that aliens dropped us here a few thousand years ago to avoid shipping charges on the way to another universe. As soon as they get the tariffs reduced, they will come back and pick us up.
Well that would certainly explain some humans I could name.
Um, all you did was highlight some sentences in a science article, then mumble about the "conspiracy". There wasn't a lot of "detail" in your post, but you did do a good job of exposing how little you actually understand of these topics, so the time wasn't totally wasted.
My guess is that 100% of it has a known function. It's just not known by human science.
This "guess" of yours is about as (in)accurate as most of your other "guesses" on biological topics. Tell us -- if "100% of it has a known function", then why can giant portions of it be completely eliminated with no harmful effects?
For example: Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice. In short, the researchers snipped over 2.3 *million* basepairs of apparently "junk DNA" out of mouse DNA, then produced offspring mice which were entirely missing that DNA. The resulting mice were normal in all respects. As a press release states:
Another specific piece of evidence is that the genome of the fugu fish (as well as other fish in the blowfish family) is remarkably "clean" compared to that of other fish (or other vertebrates), even other fish which are rather closely related. It's *missing* most of the DNA that other fish (and vertebrates) have that are collectively known as "junk DNA", and as a result has a genome that is nearly "pure" genes (i.e. coding regions) stripped of most non-coding regions. And the fugu gets along just *fine* without them. How and why its genome got "streamlined" by "cleaning house" of most of its "junk DNA" is a fascinating question which is being looked into, but the fact remains that if this "junk DNA" is all that critical and "actually" used for something after all, on the whole, then how does the fugu do so swimmingly (sorry, bad pun) without it at all?"In these studies, we were looking particularly for sequences that might not be essential," said Eddy Rubin, Director of the JGI, where the work was conducted. "Nonetheless we were surprised, given the magnitude of the information being deleted from the genome, by the complete lack of impact noted. From our results, it would seem that some non-coding sequences may indeed have minimal if any function."
A total of 2.3 million letters of DNA code from the 2.7-billion-base-pair mouse genome were deleted. To do this, embryonic cells were genetically engineered to contain the newly compact mouse genome. Mice were subsequently generated from these stem cells. The research team then compared the resulting mice with the abridged genome to mice with the full-length version. A variety of features were analysed, ranging from viability, growth and longevity to numerous other biochemical and molecular features. Despite the researchers' efforts to detect differences in the mice with the abridged genome, none were found.
So I repeat -- there are very good reasons, based on testing and on the evidence, that "junk DNA" on the whole really is "junk". And that doesn't change even if a *few* specific non-coding regions end up being involved in gene expression or whatnot. Finding a few discarded items of value in the city dump doesn't magically change the whole thing into a mountain of pearls.
But no, I don't know,
Obviously.
but I know that scientists keep finding more of it has a function than earlier believed.
No, scientists have found a few vanishingly small portions of non-coding DNA which are involved in regulation. But that in no way supports your assertion that "100%" of it actually has some function, especially since various kinds of tests -- like those mentioned above, as well as observations that the vast majority of non-coding DNA is entirely non-conserved -- clearly indicate that it really, truly, has no biological use. Deal with it.
[And which creation scientists are at work decoding the function of the rest Name some of them.]
There's a whole list of creation scientists including several biologists at the ICR website.
Translation: "There aren't any."
Son, if you're under the mistaken impression that ICR's pet "scientists" are actually performing any real research on these topics, I regret to have to be the one to inform you that they're not.
However, most scientists that believe in creation don't advertise it because of the anti-creation bias and the militant evolutionists.
ROFL!!! Yeah, it's the *CONSPIRACY* again! LOL!
You conspiracy nuts never cease to amuse me.
Look, I know that the loons at ICR et al like to invoke this excuse for the obvious lack of actual "creation science", but it's just a canard, and I'm sad to see that you have actually swallowed it. Read my lips: It. Is. Not. True.
Furthermore, you reveal a misunderstanding when you speak of "scientists that believe in creation" in response to a question about "creation scientists". The two groups are *NOT* interchangable. Yes, there are many (perhaps most) scientists who "believe in creation". I have no squabble with them, and I don't know anyone who does. That however is not the same as "creation scientists" -- the charlatans who attempt to paint a "scientific" gloss on the religious dogma of literalist creationism (especially the young-earth variety), even if they have to trash all real science in order to shoe-horn their unscientific beliefs into some superficially "scientific" appearing brand of pseudoscience. Learn the difference.
In fact, I wouldn't tell you of any that weren't openly publishing it, because of the militant attitude of the evolutionists. There are people who make it their life's work to harrass the employers of creationists in science disciplines.
Paranoid much?
And yes, I'm familiar with Meyer and Sternberg, and no, that doesn't support your delusion.
On the various forms of well-established, independently confirming, endlessly validated dating methods which everyone but the rabid YECs understand and know are reliable.
Uh huh. Sure. You betcha.
Two creationists playing poker: "I'll make up any stupid thing and falsely claim that that's what evolutionists do, just to have a cheap, dishonest excuse to attack them, and the other creationists won't know the difference because they don't actually understand how science is performed either, we just know it must be stupid."
Creationist dishonesty of this sort is rampant:
Tell me, Red Sea Swimmer: Do you condone this behavior of creationists? Yes or no? Is lying for the "cause" of creationism acceptable to you?Summary of the ability of the two creationists (Hovind and Havoc) to present information they *know* is false, and to *fail* to retract when reminded of their falsehoods, is presented here, along with links to all appropriate documentation.
This sort of behavior, unfortunately, is *typical* of creationists. Here, want dozens of more examples of their distortions? A few more for the road? Another? Still more, perhaps? How about even more? Ooh, here are some good examples. And there's lots more where that came from, like this and this and this and lots more here and *tons* here and countless more here and yet more here, a goodie... Wait, there's more over here, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., *ETC.*, etc., etc., etc., . How about 300 more creationist misrepresentations? Not enough, you say? Well then visit Creationist Lies and Blunders. Hey, what about Freeper metacognative's (he's a creationist) ability to accuse Daniel Dennett (evolutionary scientist) of wanting to put Christians into concentration camps for their beliefs, when Dennett was *actually* clearly writing about how RADICAL ISLAM may need to be contained? The ugly details here. Metacognative *still* shows no shame for his patently false accusation.
Sure it does.
If I was related to an ape I am sure that it should show up.
It does -- you (and all humans) are *still* apes: You are an ape.
If you disagree, feel free to support your belief by stating a set of characteristic features which delineate the ape family, which humans do not also share.
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