'Astonishing' skull unearthed in Africa

BBC Online ^ | 10 July, 2002 | Ivan Noble

[ASA Vet]

Thank you for the sane explanation. Now prepare to be flamed for thinking.

[Dan Day]

Doesn't it seem that in seven million years we should have advanced further than we have.

One would have hoped...

There's a great scene/line in the movie "Strange Days" that makes the same point.

Scene: Lenny (Ralph Feinnes) comes out of a store to see his car about to be towed away. He runs across the street to try to see if he can convince the tow truck driver to leave his car alone. As he runs up to the tow truck driver, calling out "wait, hold it, let's talk about this" in a non-threatening manner, the tow truck driver whips out a gun and sticks it in Lenny's face with a menacing glare.

Lenny rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and in an exasperated voice asks, "Two million years of human evolution, and *that's* the best idea you can come up with?"

[Dan Day]

Looks like they found quite a monkey there. Proves little except that you can find ape-like hominid fossils in Africa.

Look up the word "hominid" to see the flaw in your first sentence.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Question: How does one species beget another?

Mutation and natural selection are the explanations. Your're free to accept or reject them. The good thing about bi-sexual reproduction is that it increases the chances of favorable mutations catching on and spreading.

[Dan Day]

Maybe someone could answer this for me. Man apparently went through all sorts of evolving while at the same time the ape never changed. That is something I don't get.

Apes have changed a lot, actually. There are roughly many differences between modern apes and X-million-year-old fossil apes as there are between modern humans and X-million-year-old hominid fossils.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Thanks. Good to see left-brained surfers splitting hairs on jokes. LOL! I take it you figured out it wasn't a "monkey" in the technical sense either. [?] Any more illuminations?
Thanks for the anthropology lesson. Look up "joke" or "jocular" in a dictionary when you get a chance.

[ASA Vet]

The good thing about bi-sexual reproduction is that it increases
the chances of favorable mutations catching on and spreading.

Nope that's not the "good" thing about it. ;-)

[Waco]

Definitly female. (Jaw still moving.)

[jwalsh07]

Did the skull have a pelvis in it?

[powderhorn]

Question: How does one species beget another?

One species doesn't exactly beget another. Another species happens when one group that is closely related to another STOPS begetting with the other group. Beagles and greyhounds are both varieties of the same species. If one of them changed so drastically that its offspring could no longer reproduce with the other they would then be two distinct species.

[uglybiker]

"I knew I would one day find it... I've been looking for 25 years," said Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers, France.

Mr. Brunet was later quoted as saying: "Now, if I could just find my $@&*$@%$ car keys!!"

[WKB]

This proves it !!!! There is no GOD!!!!

If this is correct then so what! BUT!

[Don Myers]

Here we go again. How many years will it take for this one to be declared a fraud?

[powderhorn]

Man apparently went through all sorts of evolving while at the same time the ape never changed. That is something I don't get.

It's a bit easier to get when you consider that we didn't evolve from apes. Both apes and man evolved on separate paths from something else.

[Don Myers]

"...Why are you so afraid that the overwhelming evidence supporting human evolution will rock your world? It's okay. We evolved. Fit your Good into it somehow."

It takes real tolerance to believe your grandmother (add a few greats in there) was a lizard.

[Don Myers]

"Were human advancement left to people like you, we'd not yet have figured out what to do with caves."

Many people, those who are able to believe mankind evolved from the lowest form of life. can identify with caves. There is all of that empty space to think about. Seriously, Doc, it takes more faith to believe the universe is a chance proposition than it does to believe that God created everything. By this reckoning, you must be a very religious person.

[pyx]

Analysis of the ancient find is not yet complete, but already it is clear that it has an apparently puzzling combination of modern and ancient features.

That just bent the pin on my bullsh!t detector. Just what the world needs, yet another archeological find that turns out to be manufactured.

[Don Myers]

Your questions to the good doc will probably only bring a request to put your questions into a test tube for him to examine and create a theory in 50 or 60 years.

[Don Myers]

"There's no law that says every species must change into something else."

Come now. That is a very simple cop-out. If one species evolves, others must as well. Life is life. It doesn't pick and choose.

[Don Myers]

"...Show me evidence that God exists."

The faithful don't need further evidence. For secular people, the evidence lies in the things around them. If that doesn't work you, just consider why there is so much opposition to something that doesn't exist.