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."
Lets give her a hand for a job well done!
It’s a hand job?
Either that, or somebody was careless discarding the remains of their Buffalo Wings.
Oops, turned out to be the leg bone of a turkey.
Or an extinct pig tooth like Nebraska Man.
It’ll never close the credibility gap.
That is from the previous humans 3-D printed bone.
See, history does repeat itself.
Yet another “hominid fossil of the month”.
Yawn.
Nonsense!
If you find a fossil in the exact middle of a gap, one that perfectly matched the predicted transitional form in that gap, you have NOT filled that gap.
You have merely created two gaps on either side of it.
That's why they call people who believe this "creationists", they create gaps where data fills holes...
Yeah, people should stop finding these things. Old news.
> Yeah, people should stop finding these things. Old news.
They can find all they want.
The old news is that they try to make it into big news, when further analysis reveals it to be the femur of an opossum or something.
If the styloid process in the hand bone has not been seen in any human fossil older than 1.8 million years, how did it suddenly appear, fully formed?
That’s quite a mutation. We’re asked to believe the human hand was a primitive, clumsy thing, and suddenly became dextrous almost overnight in the span of evolutionary time.
Perhaps some paleontologist here can enlighten me.
You know what they say about using the word, "never". :)
"Without a doubt, the ultimate Black Swan is whatever it was that permitted merely genetic human beings to emerge into full humanness just yesterday (cosmically speaking), some 50,000 years ago.
Prior to this there was existence, but so what? There was life, but who cares? With no one to consciously experience it, what was the point? Without self-conscious observers, the whole cosmos could bang into being and contract into nothingness, and it would be no different than the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it.
.....Most science and religion are unserious, but especially -- one might say intrinsically -- when they exclude each other.
A religion that cannot encompass science is not worthy the name, while a science that cannot be reconciled with religion is not fit for human beings. And I mean this literally, in that it will be a science that applies to a different species, not the one that is made to know love, truth, beauty, existence, and the Absolute. Science must begin and end in this principle -- which is to say, the Principle -- or it is just a diversion. ...."
HERE: Creation Myths of the Tenured
<>
"...human consciousness is a revolutionary development "which cannot be arrived at by means of either logic or evolution." This revolution is outside and beyond the boundaries of all science and all philosophy, for it represents a radical discontinuity with all that has come before.
Yes, there are continuities, obviously; but in its essence, human consciousness is absolutely unlike anything else in all of creation. Evolution doesn't really have room for true creative novelty, since its apparent novelty is just an illusory result of random accidents, not any conscious intent.
Furthermore, evolution does not, and cannot, confer meaning on existence. Rather, it is only humans who decipher meaning in an evolutionary process that cannot account for it.
.......otherwise we would be like animals, who essentially have only preprogrammed responses to environmental stimuli. ...
Humanly speaking, there can be nothing "higher" than the love of truth. It is not as if we will "evolve" beyond such love; rather, one can only progress backward, as in deconstruction, multiculturalism, leftism, etc. ...."
If further analysis somehow proves it’s the femur of “an opossum or something”, then that will also be published and discussed.
When do we evolve into talking apes like on Planet of the Apes?
As near as I can figure, several ice ages ago.
Some of us still do "polar bear hunting"...
Where is it claimed it appeared fully formed? 400,000 years is a long time with a lot of offspring. Assuming a generation of 30, a very high estimate, it’s like your grandparents with over 13,000 greats in front of grandparent.
We have. Just that most of us are less hairy.
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