Potentially Monumental

[FlaSoxxJim]

This is potentially a seriously big deal. It will be in this week's issue of Science, which has about as rigorous a peer review process as there is, so the evidence presented will be compelling.

 

Ancient fossil could be human-ape ancestor

 

It is important to note two points the news article brings out. First, even though this is very likely an ancestral great ape from a place on the evolutionary trunk before hominids split off, it is not necessarily THE 'missing link.' That is, this species may have predated the actual split by some unknown amount of time.

 

Second, note this simple, inoccuous statement in a mainstream news story:

 

Living great apes include humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans. The group is thought to have split from the lesser apes, such as gibbons and siamangs, about 14 million to 16 million years ago.

 

Humans represent one of four extant lines of great apes. No controversy, no scandalous claim. Pretty mainstream – and pretty dang neat, too.

 

It will be good to get this particular gap in the physical fossil record filled. The old, 'Show me the human-ape ancestor in the fossil record' is an old Creationist saw that may finally be put out to pasture.

[Soxy]

That is awe-some. That fossil predates Lucy by several million years doesn't it? Absolutely incredible....

[CrimsonWeltall]

Lucy is at like 3M years. This thing is 13M.

[Soxy]

Lucy is at like 3M years. This thing is 13M.

Wow, that's even more amazing--I thought Lucy was around 6 or 7 mill--but it's been a looooooong time since I studied that.

 

I can't get over how cool this is.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Lucy is at like 3M years. This thing is 13M.

Yeah, they are suggesting that this species is from pretty soon after the great ape branch split off from gibbons and siamangs, so it's a very early great ape. It's kind of neat that they suggest an upright posture in this species even though it predates any specializations for brachiation (tree swinging). From that perspective, all the quaint popular notions about man 'coming down from the trees' over the course of evolutionary time are way off base. It appears the arborial great apes had to continue to differentiate in order to get off the grouns and into the trees.

 

Cool stuff.

[YASNY]

Until the theory of evolution, it is just that ... a theory. Period.

[FlaSoxxJim]

That is the way science works, Yas, you know that. Special Relativity is still "only a theory," but light indeed exhibits duality, bends in gravity, etc., A-bombs follow the rules very nicely.... It falls short of the Grand Unification Einstein sought. It needed a few fudge factors as place-holders for strong forces, Higgs Bosons and such, but the fact that some "mere theory" anticipated those entities existed remains impressive.

 

Ditto for Chuck D's theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He had no way to know what the particles of inheritance were (unaware of Mendel's work at the time), but he understood very well that such discrete units had to exist. He coldn't use approaches like comparative proteomics and genomics, but as these tools are added to the arsenal they continue to corroborate the theory.

 

This is a general quip directed not at you, but at the detractors of sound science in general. In about sixth grade, students learn the difference between an hypothesis and a concept that has been so rigorously tested that it is elevated to the status of a theory. Conveniently forgetting the difference is yet another shell game of the Creation "scientists." Fortunately, their relevance today is on par with that of flat earthers or geocentrists.

[Wong & Owens]

They must have did the test wrong or something, 'cause the earth is only 6,000 years old. Everyone knows that.