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"skeleton reverses the common wisdom of human evolution"

It comes down to the statement that the "Skeleton reverses the common wisdom of Evolution"

Erm no it does not.
This is the kind of thing that advocates of reason have to deal with when taking on the creationists. They think that if a person changes their mind it negates all of the theory. As if they would accept one crap statement(and there are so may) could invalidate the whole of their Bible.

In this case however, no one changed their mind. Why howver did Owen Lovejoy make the comments he has? Surely demonstrating Ardi (and there's nothing new about her) really emphasises what evolution should predict?

It is no wonder we have a hard time with creationist pricks without having to sort out spurious and incorrect comments by the so called experts.
 
Well, to their defense, as I was saying, the "common wisdom" they were talking about is the assumption that the ape at that point would be more chimp-like. And it turns out that there are some interesting differences. Basically evolution seems to have taken a brief detour there, so to speak, as that specimen diverged towards a more ape-like configuration than being a sorta linear evolution towards human as previously assumed.

I'm sure to a biologist it's exciting stuff, but, yeah, unfortunately to the rest of the world it makes it sound like they disproved evolution or something.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, to their defense, as I was saying, the "common wisdom" they were talking about is the assumption that the ape at that point would be more chimp-like. And it turns out that there are some interesting differences. Basically evolution seems to have taken a brief detour there, so to speak, as that specimen diverged towards a more ape-like configuration than being a sorta linear evolution towards human as previously assumed.

I'm sure to a biologist it's exciting stuff, but, yeah, unfortunately to the rest of the world it makes it sound like they disproved evolution or something.
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I'm not sure it's even that exciting for a biologist. In terms of general evolutionary processes, it isn't telling us anything we didn't already know. In terms of human evolution, it fills in another missing part of the bigger picture, but it's not a particularly interesting part.

If it was actually replacing something we thought we knew with something new then it would be much more important. When it comes to human evolution, we are quite well aware of where the most important gaps in our knowledge are, and they are much closer to the Homo sapiens end of things. "When did we start talking?", for example.
 
Exactly. This find isn't going to give Richard Leakey a hard on.

Since the last 'split' before our divergence was the Gorillas, one might expect the common ancestor to be more Gorilla (or at least something not unlike it) like. Certainly chimps (then) didn't look like Chimps(now) and Ardi, for one looks a bit like a Funky Gorilla type Robust animal. But the important point is that, had we a time machine we would not recognise the common ancestor from its grandparents or grandchildren.

I don't think it is fair to surmise evolution took a bit of a detour, apart from her looking a bit more robust she looks a lot more archaic than Australopithecus but not much more than Robustus. Its Lucy's type that requires more thought. When and why did her kind become more Gracile? Ardi is what you would expect from an ape just getting used to standing upright now and again.

The press and certain boffins are sensationalising this find. They have good reason to be happy to find her but their reaction is sending out all the wrong signals.

Btw, is there not a more appropriate forum area for this than "Religion and Philosophy!?
 
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I had the impression the importance of this Ardi find was that it's an entire skeleton, correct me if I'm wrong.
 
You stand, in a way, corrected. There has been little furore over the completeness of the skeleton. Moreover, such a complete skeleton is hardly going to 'change our minds on evolution'
 
pakeha said:
I had the impression the importance of this Ardi find was that it's an entire skeleton, correct me if I'm wrong.
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Not complete, but more complete than most fossils.

The importance is that it the closest thing we have found yet to a common chimp/human ancestor. But even though it is the closest thing, it is still not the thing we really want to find. This species isn't a direct ancestor of either humans or chimps. It's on some other branch of the tree, somewhere vaguely near where we think that common ancestor was. You have to forgive people for getting excited though - hominid fossils of any type are really hard to find.
 
Glad to be corrected, Hux.
Still, Arpi is an old friend, so to speak.
So I wondered what made this particular find so 'newsworthy' and could only imagine it was the 'completeness' of the skeleton.

UndercoverElephant said:
Not complete, but more complete than most fossils.

The importance is that it the closest thing we have found yet to a common chimp/human ancestor. But even though it is the closest thing, it is still not the thing we really want to find. This species isn't a direct ancestor of either humans or chimps. It's on some other branch of the tree, somewhere vaguely near where we think that common ancestor was. You have to forgive people for getting excited though - hominid fossils of any type are really hard to find.
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I understand there are fossilised remains of several other individuals from the same find, not yet known how many.
 
sphenisc said:
How was this determined?
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She is on the Hominid side of the line. Therefore she cannot be ancestral to chimps. She lived, if you will, after the 'split'.

In terms of completeness, Dawkins claims in his latest book, that we have enough Australopithecus bits now to make a complete picture. Anyhoo, Turkana boy (nearer to us in time) is almost complete.

However it sits, IF the completeness of Ardi is giving the anthropologists a semi, then they have presented her all wrong and I can imagine the creationists will be creaming themselves with another 'mistake of evolution'.
 
sphenisc said:
How was this determined?
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It's too late. Ardi is only 4.4 million years old, and the common ancestor of chimps and humans is more like 6 or 7 million years old (determined by DNA "clock" dating). It is also not similar enough to either chimps or humans to have been on the direct line of descent. (EDIT: although as stated in the previous post, Ardi is closer to humans than to chimps).

Ardi is descended from the common ancestor of humans and chimps, but is on one of the many branches below that died out. Two of those branches did not die out - the one that led to all four "great apes" and the one that led to humans.
 
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As far as I can tell, she lies on the hominid side because she was,apparently, occasionally bipedal.
 
UndercoverElephant said:
.. It is also not similar enough to ... humans to have been on the direct line of descent.
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That's what I was asking - in what way was it determined to not be on the direct line of descent.

Ardi is descended from the common ancestor of humans and chimps, but is on one of the many branches below that died out. Two of those branches did not die out - the one that led to all four "great apes" and the one that led to humans.
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The other great apes branched of before the common ancestor of humans and chimps. They don't lie on either of the branches you're talking about.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, to their defense, as I was saying, the "common wisdom" they were talking about is the assumption that the ape at that point would be more chimp-like. And it turns out that there are some interesting differences. Basically evolution seems to have taken a brief detour there, so to speak, as that specimen diverged towards a more ape-like configuration than being a sorta linear evolution towards human as previously assumed.

I'm sure to a biologist it's exciting stuff, but, yeah, unfortunately to the rest of the world it makes it sound like they disproved evolution or something.
Click to expand...


So what is the real discrepancy then? That this thing was upright instead of just semi-upright like apes?
 
Stuff like that it had a foot that had a very opposable "thumb" for use in trees, IIRC even more so than the chimps, but it still managed to be ok for bipedal walk. It's as if evolution first tried to produce a better hybrid, before giving up entirely on the idea of living in trees.

ETA: but when you factor in that where they discovered it there used to be a forest at the time, I guess it's not very surprising that it was still an advantage to be able to live in trees.
 
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Ardi is descended from the common ancestor of humans and chimps, but is on one of the many branches below that died out. Two of those branches did not die out - the one that led to all four "great apes" and the one that led to humans.
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I confess I am confused. I do not recall anyone saying she was on a lineage that died out, whilst I fully accept that there were a few 'dead ends'. Even so, if this is correct it is no more than Darwinian evolution would predict. We would be in trouble if there was no diversity in the fossil evidence. All that seems to have been said is that Ardi is on the Hominid line and is older than Lucy by 2.4 mil. years.

In the meantime, just watch some creationist make something out of that.
 
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