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."
If you mean what came first, poop or toilets, I’m going with poop.
Yes. But dramatic changes such as genetic mutations causing sickle-shaped blood cells (that offer advantages in certain selection conditions) occur with less smoother continuity.
That smelly comment reminds me of something I saw here recently
Yes, the old flat earth accusations....question the crackpot theory, and inevitably that one comes up.
Tiresome.
What does sickle cell has to do with the rarity of fossils.
Don’t know where you saw an accusation in my post, wasn’t there.
What one believes to be true has no bearing on what actually is true and the example given quite often is the one I provided only because it’s usually easy for someone to understand the analogy.
Sickle cells resulted from a rare genetic mutation that offered certain survival advantages to the population it occurs in. In evolutionary time, it is a sudden appearance. A more dramatic transition, if you will. Connect this with the rarity of transitional fossils with suddenly-appeared (in evolutionary time) dramatic features on them.
Evolution has “withstood” nothing. It has existed, has hung on, never dying, despite the lack of support in the fossil record and the lack of proof of the whole mess. And the reason for this dogged belief, against all logic, is the refusal to believe in...what did you call them...”creation myths”, I think.
You want me to provide proof of my claim-—are you kidding, LOL? You act as though evolution is fact, settled science, and questioning it is heresy. YOU provide proof-—incontrovertible, settled proof-—that evolution is true. If you do, the secular world will celebrate you; no one has been able to do it yet.
No.
Sudden appearance? Well, kinda, I guess, maybe, not sure really, never researched it in detail to be honest.
Whether the mutation appeared suddenly or the conditions that increased mortality rates in those that didn’t have it appeared suddenly the mutation increased the chances to survive and reproduce.
This still has nothing to do with fossils and the conditions needed to for them to form or their transitional nature. If the only connection is the concept of time, surely a better analogy would work here, if you needed one at all.
At the risk of being rude, you just wrote two paragraphs of complete falsehoods.
You made the claim that there are many evolutionary scientists doubt the facts of evolution. You suggested a bit of simple research will bear that out. That is a very straightforward and simple claim that you made. I merely asked you to provide me a link or two supporting this assertion. After all, you called it “simple.”
Evolution, on the other hand, is hardly simple. It is massive. Huge. Monumental. And its core tenets form the whole of biology today. So when you challenge me to “provide evidence,” while I’d be happy to do so, it is not like creationism. It cannot be summed up with, “God did it.” So please, be more specific. What species or morphological feature or fossil gives you the most trouble?
Creationists like to play the game of dumping 4,000 random things that they think support their cause, never pausing to realize that each of those 4,000 things has decades, if not centuries, of scientific work to understand the evolution of those things. Things which often occurred over many tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
Like I said, it’s hard. So again, let’s get specific. What’s one of the things off the top of your head that you just simply cannot - or will not - accept is evidence of evolution?
Credibility, or credulity?
Fossils are typically more common when the once-living entities creating them are more populous.
Your unwillingness to accept over-whelming scientific scholarship by denying it’s existence, when something as simple as a google search could provide reading material and evidence for years is not a strong indicator of what is or is not true.
That’s a basic math calculation. I haven’t seen anyone making the claim you seem to be arguing against here.
but that’s all just a conspiracy.
You see.
Everything is man, everything.
Exactly which theory of evolution are you talking about? =>
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1839540/posts?page=22#22
Re: Ann Coulter:
“No science is ever frightening to Christians. Religious people don’t need the science to come out any particular way on IQ or AIDS or sex differences any more than they need the science to come out any particular way on evolution...If evolution is true, then God created evolution. ... Although God-believers don’t need evolution to be false, athiests need evolution to be true. “. Ann Coulter (from her 2006 book, “Godless”)
<>
Undeniable truth of life # 23. Evolution cannot explain Creation. Rush Limbaugh (1980’s)
“...evolution does take place, but it doesn’t explain Creation. Obviously, it can’t ..” Rush Limbaugh Facts, Science Smash the Global Warming Myth February 28, 2007
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