Posted on 05/18/2008 8:47:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The first-ever chimpanzee fossils were recently discovered in an area previously thought to be unsuitable for chimps. Fossils from human ancestors were also found nearby.
Although researchers have only found a few chimp teeth, the discovery could cause a shake-up in the theories of human evolution.
“We know today if you go to western and central Africa that humans and chimps live in similar and neighboring environments,” said Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist at the California Academy of Sciences. “This is the first evidence in the fossil record that they coexisted in the same place in the past.”
It had previously been thought that chimps never lived in the arid Rift Valley — they prefer more lush environments like the Congo and jungles of western Africa. For years, scientists believed that early human ancestors left the jungles and moved east to the less wooded grasslands, and that this move caused the evolutionary split between the human and chimp lines.
But now, with the discovery of ancient chimps and humans in the same area, evolutionists may have to rethink what caused humans to become humans.
“For many years people have used this kind of geographic split in environment as an explanation as an origin of humans and bipedalism,” co-author Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut told LiveScience. “People have still retained this idea of a split geographic distribution of chimps and humans. This shows it certainly wasn’t true half a million years ago, and may not have been true before that. We need to look for another reason for the evolutionary split.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The first sentence in my response pretty much covered that part.
And with scientific certainty what would be the result if they attempted to breed?
Would they ignore each other in captivity?
“They are facinating because the intermediate genetic variants still exist outside of England.”
You know they are intermediate genetic variants how? Just because they have similar genetic characteristics means nothing. They could very easily all had distinct origins. Sorry. Just more plausible stories without actual evidence.
You evolutionists have no more “evidence’ than the creationists.
Hank
Ya, I’ve studied the pitiful explanations.
They seem to have difficulty when addressing various whale species.
First they are undecided as to whether land animals evolved into whales, or whales crawled ashore.
Next, depending on which direction they’re supposed to have evolved, they have trouble addressing the transition in the way they nursed their young.
The topic was descent with modification.
Here's a quiz. In a given population, there suddenly occur 100 absolutely nasty mutations and one beneficial one.
What will the population look like in terms of these mutations in five generations?
Whether or not one has "alternative theories", if Darwinism is false (which it is), or contradicts the facts of nature (which it does), then there is no reason to believe it, obviously.
Right. Bacteria evolve into (gosh!) bacteria, therefore the magick chance fairy transmogrified monkeys into cathedral-builders with many swooshes of her sparkly selection wand.
But did you know the latest truth? Apes evolved from man.
The Nasties band together and eat Beneficient for lunch. Or a coconut falls on Beneficient and that's the end of it. Or the Nasties have lots of offspring when they discover that the Normals had a secret attraction to Nasty mutants all along.
We know they are genetic variants by studying their genomes and by direct observation. I know you are nursing a pet theory hank, but your theory has to adress the data. You can't just hide under the covers.
Occasionally two different species can mate and produce offspring. You then get a hybrid, and depending on how similar (how recent the speciation event) they are, their offspring may produce offspring too.
Zonkeys, Wolphins and Ligers: Nature Loves a Hybrid http://www.livescience.com/animals/050727_hybrid_flies.html
The fact that they interbreed and produce a hybrid rather than either species is evidence FOR evolution, not against it.
"Species" is simply a usefull way of catagagorizing living things (taxonomy), but in many ways it is an intellectual optical illusion. There are no set species. No granularity. All life on earth is Carbon/DNA life and new species are evolving all of the time and disappearing all of the time. We, and they, are all intermediate forms.
If you comprehend english, you will notice that I was answering your question, albeit, with an example evolutionists are unable to defend.
Your “quiz” is specious!
You are unable to cite an example of “100 nasty mutations” occurring in any population.
If I were to take the bait, I still ascert that the “one benificial mutation would NOT result in a new species.
“We know they are genetic variants by studying their genomes and by direct observation. I know you are nursing a pet theory hank, but your theory has to adress the data.”
I don’t have a theory about origins at all, nor does anyone else. Hypotheses abound, and one may turn out to be right, but none at the moment are. It is possible to determine by studying a genome that things are not related, but determining things are related by studying the genome? No. Similar genomes are just similar genomes and carry no information about how they became similar.
Perhaps you’ll answer the question I asked in post 59.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2017668/posts?page=59#59
“Just one question. Why is it so important to know where we came from? Isn’t it more important to get on with life and determine where we’re going?
Even if evolution were true, what good would it be? It’s not like physics or chemistry or medicine which can actually be used to produce things of value and improve the quality of human life. Except for providing prestigous jobs for a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals, what possible value would evolution be?”
Except for those who have an anti-religion axe to grind, I really do not understand why people think evolution is so important. I regard it in the same vain as ufology—interesting to those who like to think it’s possibly true, but ultimately unimportant.
Hank
If you don't find a discussion of evolution of value, why do you always pop up on these threads to offer your non-scientific and totally pointless criticisms?
THANK YOU!!!! The fact that people (on both sides) take time out of their day to obsess on this gives me the creeps. It's summer time. Go outside, people.
“If you don’t find a discussion of evolution of value, why do you always pop up on these threads to offer your non-scientific and totally pointless criticisms?”
OK! So you can’t answer the question. Thank you!
Hank
I’m an ahtheist, and I have no use for either geocentrism or heliocentrism. Why does there have to be an alternative? What if the origin of the planets is never explained? What difference would it make?
Why can’t copernicists admit they just don’t know where we came from—nobody does. I certainly don’t believe any one designed the solar system, it’s to poor a design. Don’t see how it could have evolved either, no matter how many plausible stories the astronomers make up.
Just one question. Why is it so important to know where we came from? Isn’t it more important to get on with life and determine where we’re going?
Even if heliocentrism were true, what good would it be? It’s not like physics or chemistry or medicine which can actually be used to produce things of value and improve the quality of human life. Except for providing prestiguous jobs for a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals, what possible value would heliocentrism be?
What exactly does heliocentrism have to do with where we came from. Heliocentrism is astronomy and a test of Newtonian physics, not origins.
If you are thinking of cosmology, your recasting of my post would be right on.
If you really believe this, instead of playing games, why don’t you or some other evolutionist say what you think the evolutionary hypothesis, if it were true, could be used for.
We’re here. We and the world we live in have the exact natures they do, and that is what we must know and understand to live successfully in this world. Knowing how the world got to be what it is will not change one present fact—it just doesn’t matter except to those who have a personal interest in such things.
Hank
We’re here. We and the world we live in have the exact natures they do, and that is what we must know and understand to live successfully in this world. Knowing how the world got to be what it is will not change one present fact—it just doesn’t matter except to those who have a personal interest in such things.
Things like flu shots? Yeah, I have a personal interest.
Eugenics. That's what the evolutionists would say if there wasn't so much public stigma attached to that word.
Time’s arrow has no preferred direction in physics. knowing how processes worked in the past tells us how they will work in the future.
knowing how biology works is essential to our survival.
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