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."
Okay, point taken. I’ll be interested to see if they find any more fossils in that 400,000 year span and see any development of that feature in the hand.
Anyway, a 1.4 million-year-old fossil will never close the black-hole-size gap in the credibility of "evolution" (Darwin's "The Origins of the Species").
You gotta “hand” it to those guys though.
Quite an imagination.
From one pig tooth, they created a whole “Nebraska family”, what they looked like, how they dressed, where they lived, etc.
Thank you for making my point.
2001: A Space Odyssey #2 Movie CLIP - From Bone to Satellite
You’re welcome. Guess I didn’t understand your “Nonsense” reply to my “credibility” answer.
Darwin’s seminal work is not gospel, it’s framework on which over 100 years of additional knowledge and evidence has been built and confirmed. Darwin was one of the first to observe and document the process, much, much more has been added to it since.
*You gotta “hand” it to those guys though.
Quite an imagination.*
Yes, and their cartoonists are very convincing to the Leftists.
> If further analysis somehow proves it’s the femur of “an
> opossum or something”, then that will also be published and
> discussed.
Yes, with no fanfare. Like the one column-inch in National Geographic for their cover story on the dino-bird, which turned out to be a total fraud.
> Darwin’s seminal work is not gospel, it’s framework on
> which over 100 years of additional knowledge and evidence
> has been built and confirmed. Darwin was one of the first
> to observe and document the process, much, much more has
> been added to it since.
Has the same ring to it as the assertions made for what passes as “Climate Science” these days.
Can you spot all of the hidden obvious presuppositions, assumptions and hypotheses in the article?
Are you Gagdad Bob?
All of them? probably not.
It is. It’s how science is supposed to work.
It should; evolution and global warming are the two great secular religions. Scientists are coming to understand that Darwin was out to lunch, but those who are desperate to explain away creation without bringing God into it will never give it up.
Media hype and public awareness notwithstanding, it still will happen when and if new evidence is discovered. It’s how it’s designed to work.
“evolution and global warming are the two great secular religions”
Evolutionists are only required to tithe 5% though, so it’s an economic decision.
Where did they find this bone? Behind a KFC?
Scatter (not bury) a dozen dead chickens in differing terrain around your vicinity with location coordinates noted and come back after a year (leave alone millions) to count how many have skeletal remains identifiably located. This alone will show you how rare an occurrence it is to have bones merely fossilise.
Contrast that with the common sense and overwhelming evidence of intelligent design. People believe myths in the face of contrary evidence way beyond a reasonable doubt because they think it in their best interests to do so.
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