Fossils radically alter ideas about the look of man's earliest ancestors

Los Angeles Times ^ | October 2, 2009 | Thomas H. Maugh

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday. The centerpiece of the diverse collection of primate, animal and plant fossils is the near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor that demonstrates our earliest forebears looked nothing like a chimpanzee or other large primate, as is now commonly believed. Instead, the findings suggest that the last common ancestor of humans and primates, which existed nearly 2 million years earlier, was a primitive creature that shared few traits with modern-day members of either group. The findings, analyzed in a large group of studies published Thursday in the journal Science, also indicate that our ancestors began walking upright in woodlands, not on grassy savannas as prior generations of researchers had speculated.

[GeronL]

Monbkeys evolved from man??!!

Is this supposed to be an improvement?? Geesh....

I know it was DUmmies who mated with DUmmies until they became a different species and were named apes

[TruthWillWin]

Early man looked something like this (without the glasses):

[samtheman]

I guess it’s time to upgrade my Firefox. I’m at 3.0.6 and it crashes when I try to follow this link to the slimes website. (Reading it now with IE)

[RowdyFFC]

Frankly, I don’t find it impossible that apes and monkeys mutated from man. I have never ever believed that man evolved from primates.

But there are many individuals with the thinking process of primates. And I can certainly believe that some liberals could be responsible for such mutation to greater and lesser apes.

[RowdyFFC]

Yep, there’s ONE of them! ROFL!

[GeronL]

Different forms of socialism became different apes. lol.

Kossies stayed away from DUmmies. DUmmies became the Chimpanzees?

[ransomnote]

Thanks....so much better than the Helen Thomas picture that I was bracing myself for when I clicked on the thread link

[BCW]

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2009-10/49595039.jpg

Looks like the current 1st lady - and I use lady lightly

[samtheman]

The fossils described in the new studies were found 15 years ago in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia by a team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White of UC Berkeley. But White and his team have been relatively closemouthed about the fossils, and other researchers -- some of whom have accused him of hoarding the fossils for his own use -- have been eagerly awaiting more information.

Hmmm... 15 years from discovery to release-to-the-public. Something akin to (not saying identical to) a chain-of-custody problem?

Did ole' Timmy boy withhold evidence for a decade and a half to allow him to massage the data a bit? Just wondering.

And I ask this question as one who believes the case for evolution is extremely strong, both in general and specifically with regard to humans. But I can't help but wonder in this instance...

[muawiyah]

Not monkeys but apes ~ this is actually straight from Mohamad’s musings on the matter ~ he said the apes arose among humans who were condemned by Allah.

[muawiyah]

He was removing the bone matter from the stone matrix. 15 years of work is not all that unusual ~ and besides, this was the ONLY full skeleton he had. There are spare parts from others in his collection.

[GeronL]

He was partly right then. Then again, Mohammad wasn’t a very good human to begin with.

[muawiyah]

In reality Mohammad, as he's portrayed in the Koran and the Hadiths, probably never existed. The whole business was put together by a committee of Arabian scholars in Damascus about 70 years after his death.

It is now known they drew upon information derived from a wide variety of sources way beyond Mohammad's trances.

The committee simply tried to put the best gloss they could on their own civilization ~ couldn't let the Byzantine armies they were absorbing into their conquest machine know how barbaric and ignorant their more recent ancestors had been, or how impoverished their society really was (camels, tea, tents, sand, ......... etc.) so they painted them as having had their own major prophet complete with revelations and Sunday school plans!

I sometimes think the Meccan Arabs were more astonished at their military prowess and ability to reorganized Dark Age societies than were the people they conquered. They did have a pretty good rep with the locals when they kicked out the Persians who were mucking around looting the Mediterranean basin (as usual).

[Vaquero]

no Delorean w/flux capacitance/Mr. Fusion powered

=

lots of conjecture on the fine points.....

[mountainlion]

This does not radically alter the way I think about old bones. Lucy turned out to be a monkey again and who knows what the story will turn out about this.

[Sacajaweau]

Death, taxes, grants....Name 3 sure things...

[GeronL]

interesting stuff!

[RobbyS]

There’s a better case for what you say than the liberal claim that Jesus never existed. But liberals never question anything the Muslims say, because Mohammed is in their eyes just another charismatic cult leader. The incarnation, they think, is so, so unacceptable that they ignore the fact that their whole worldview is rejected by the radical Muslims, wow if they come to power, will gradually bring scientific progress to a halt.

[muir_redwoods]

Every human I ever met was a primate. Maybe you should study first and speak later,

Just a suggestion