Did Humans Evolve from 'Ardi'? (or does Ardi represent the latest in evolutionary storytelling?)

ACTS & FACTS ^ | November 2009 | Brian Thomas, M.S.

[GodGunsGuts]

Ardipithecus ramidus is an extinct primate whose fossilized remains were first found along the Awash River in Ethiopia about fifteen years ago. Many fragments were collected, including shattered bones from a four-foot-tall female nicknamed "Ardi." She was chosen to represent her kind, apparently because of the comparative completeness of her remains.

Now Ardi's discoverers believe they have collected enough data to reconstruct her history--but what does their data actually reveal? ...

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Let’s see what People Magazine says.

[count-your-change]

Alley Oop becomes Ardi OOPS? Putting Ardi together was a bit like going through a junkyard and gathering up auto parts to build a partial vehicle. True some of the parts don't fit very well but with a little hammering and grinding a match can be made.

Now that a frame has been constructed we can imagine how a body might fit on it and suggest how the former owners lived and what they used the vehicle for and even the color of the machine.

Of course, looking at our creation we see something wrong...all four wheels are one side but while it might make the vehicle move oddly, still it fits the story we constructed from the frame we constructed from the parts we “adjusted” producing the body we imagined.

The Ardimobile crashes and burns.

[OldNavyVet]

Good post ... Thank you ... Meanwhile, let me quote — on topic — from Steve Jones’ book “Darwin’s Ghost,” published ten years ago. From page 322 we have ...

“About fifteen million years after the emergence of the first primate, the predecessors of apes appear. A molecular clock based on inserted viruses suggests that the lines to chimp, to gorilla and to humans split some five million years ago. A dozen or so hominines — as the branch upon which we belong is called — have lived since then (although how many are real entities is hard to assess). Over that period, there appeared Ardipithecus (four and a half million years old and of intermediate form); several kinds of Australopithecus (an African primate from around a million years later which was, roughly speaking, a human below the neck but an ape above): and Homo habilis (an animal defined as having crossed the central rubicon of brain size needed to qualify for our own family).” .

And etc. Then more ...

“The first members of our own species, Homo sapiens, arose about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. By the time the miseries of the ice ages were over we were, more or less, ourselves, with smaller brains in a thin skull on a slim and elegant body.”

For what it’s worth ... Go with knowledge.