The styloid process allows the hand to lock into the wrist bones, giving humans the ability to apply greater amounts of pressure to the hand. This allows humans to make and use tools. Courtesy of University of Missouri
Posted on 12/18/2013 10:11:55 AM PST by null and void
The styloid process allows the hand to lock into the wrist bones, giving humans the ability to apply greater amounts of pressure to the hand. This allows humans to make and use tools. Courtesy of University of Missouri
COLUMBIA, MO – Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa approximately 1.42 million years ago. They suspect the bone belonged to the early human species, Homo erectus. The discovery of this bone is the earliest evidence of a modern human-like hand, indicating that this anatomical feature existed more than half a million years earlier than previously known.
"This bone is the third metacarpal in the hand, which connects to the middle finger. It was discovered at the 'Kaitio' site in West Turkana, Kenya," said Carol Ward, professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at MU. The discovery was made by a West Turkana Paleo Project team, led by Ward's colleague and co-author Fredrick Manthi of the National Museums of Kenya. "What makes this bone so distinct is that the presence of a styloid process, or projection of bone, at the end that connects to the wrist. Until now, this styloid process has been found only in us, Neandertals and other archaic humans."
The styloid process helps the hand bone lock into the wrist bones, allowing for greater amounts of pressure to be applied to the wrist and hand from a grasping thumb and fingers. Ward and her colleagues note that a lack of the styloid process created challenges for apes and earlier humans when they attempted to make and use tools. This lack of a styloid process may have increased the chances of having arthritis earlier, Ward said.
The bone was found near sites where the earliest Acheulian tools have appeared. Acheulian tools are ancient, shaped stone tools that include stone hand axes more than 1.6 million years old. Being able to make such precise tools indicates that these early humans were almost certainly using their hands for many other complex tasks as well, Ward said.
"The styloid process reflects an increased dexterity that allowed early human species to use powerful yet precise grips when manipulating objects. This was something that their predecessors couldn't do as well due to the lack of this styloid process and its associated anatomy," Ward said. "With this discovery, we are closing the gap on the evolutionary history of the human hand. This may not be the first appearance of the modern human hand, but we believe that it is close to the origin, given that we do not see this anatomy in any human fossils older than 1.8 million years. Our specialized, dexterous hands have been with us for most of the evolutionary history of our genus, Homo. They are – and have been for almost 1.5 million years – fundamental to our survival."
Why?
"Irreducible complexity" is indicative of intelligent design, but not timeframe or the particular intelligent agent, although most will posit God as the Designer.
OTOH, evolutionary theory cannot explain events like the Cambrian explosion. The fossil evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates stasis, rather than microevolution, contrary to Darwin's hypothesis. And advocates of macroevolution haven't proposed any plausible mechanism for major evolutionary leaps.
What you are missing this is what is being taught in the school system where you can’t pray or talk about creation but you talk about evolution and darwinism which is what is the base of the marxists and communists. It really doesn’t matter though, because the false sciences of evolution and global warming is being pumped into the skiulls of the masses without any recourse.
The question is "Can apes learn to write a coherent sentence?"
I think, both...
No, atheists don’t need evolution to be true. The world could be the way it is by its own nature, without the intervention of an outside deity.
Let's say for the moment that there is such a thing as irreducible complexity. If there's overwhelming evidence for ID, its proponents should be able to agree on at least a few systems that are irreducibly complex--the "where," if you will, that design was manifested. And with so much evidence to choose from, they should be able to hazard at least a guess at when in the history of life that irreducibly complex system appeared. Of course, by refusing to posit any such thing, they keep their "theory" unfalsifiable. I suspect that's really the point.
evolutionary theory cannot explain events like the Cambrian explosion.
Sure it can. "It wasn't until the Cambrian that there was a sufficient reduction in the number of oxygen-depleting bacteria to permit higher oxygen levels in the waters. This dissolved oxygen may have triggered the 'Cambrian Explosion' — when most of the major groups of animals, especially those with hard shells, first appeared in the fossil record." Now, that may turn out to be incorrrect, but you can't say there's no explanation.
And you actually think I'm going to waste my time laying out facts for a snot-nosed juvenile? You don't deserve the trouble. But I understand your frustration.
And did you really say "only five" fossil hoaxes? Did you really?
We'll note here that you were unable to offer any concrete arguments in support of your hoax, which is the theory that must be proven in the first place, not criticism OF it. You did manage the usual generic huffing and puffing of why it MUST be true, because...well, because! Don't give up, though. That missing link will come along at some point. How many have they found, already...?
*wink*
“That missing link will come along at some point. How many have they found, already...?”
There are a lot of things missing, links aren’t one of them.
Credibility gaps are susecptible to evidence, where credulity gaps may be immune.
An alleged “design flaw” does not disprove the existence of an Intelligent Designer.
.........eventually. Like maybe in 40 years. How long did it take the leading lights of the "scientific community" to understand that Piltdown was an obvious very crude fraud? A generation and a half? They wanted to believe, so therefore they did believe.
Fundamental and centrally relevant evidence of Darwinist evolution is transference from one major animal group to another. There is no such evidence.
CASE CLOSED.
Perhaps your Wally's lack of a sniffer is evidence of Intelligent Design.
“How long did it take the leading lights of the “scientific community” to understand that Piltdown was an obvious very crude fraud?”
And yet it was uncovered. The authenticity of Piltdown was questioned from early on as an unexplained aberration. As better techniques for testing and a tremendous amount of additional data, they were then able to prove it was a hoax.
To insinuate that this find is a hoax and by extension evolutionary theory by bringing up a proven hoax makes no logical sense. How many virgin Mary apparition hoaxes would it take to disprove Christianity?
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