From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Mon Jul 15 2002 - 20:20:03 MDT
In a message dated 7/15/02 11:29:02, kevin.bluck@mail.com writes:
>1: Age. The apparent 7-millionish age pushes back yet again the date of
>the split from the "common ancestor".
Not necessarily. There's some fetish in paleoanthropology which drives
paleontologists to call anything more human than a current ape a human-
only ancestor. As a result, even through chimps are the main line of
hominids, there are (supposedly) no chimp fossils older than 1.5 million
years. This is just plain silly. Some of the Australopithicines are human
ancestors, but some must be chimp and gorilla ancestors too in spite of
the fact that everybody calls their discovery a human ancestor. It's
particularly outrageous with the "Robust Australopithicines" which have
a blizzard of gorillla features but relatively human dentition and slightly
larger brains. (Their skulls look astonishingly like gorillas, too) According
to conventional wisdom, several branches of robusts disappear suddenly
and are replaced by the very similar gorillas who supposedly had been
hanging out for 6 million years without leaving any fossils. Riiigghhht.
The melange of human, nonhuman ape, and primitive characters of the
new skull is *exactly* what you expect from a common ancestor. This
thing could easily be the ancestor of humans, chimps, gorillas, or even
all 3.
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