Science and Exploration

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Except you aren't right, Ebon. If you had bothered to read the actual story (or even better the actual papers the story is based on) you would have noticed the following:

A startling mix of human and primitive traits found in the brains, hips, feet and hands of an extinct species identified last year make a strong case for it being the immediate ancestor to the human lineage, scientists have announced.

You would have also noticed this in the next immediate paragraph:

These new findings could rewrite long-standing theories about the precise steps human evolution took, they added, including the notion that early human female hips changed shape to accommodate larger-brained offspring. There is also new evidence suggesting that this species had the hands of a toolmaker.

Note that this is not, in the least bit, saying that Darwin was wrong (Darwin actually did not specify the steps that humans took after we split from chimps because he didn't have access to the evidence). Rather, it is saying that the time frame in which certain modifications that led to us having the bodies and brains we do may have started earlier than we had believed.

This find means that, just to take two modifications, that changes in the size of brain toward the currently colossal brain in our heads and the hips necessary for a woman to give birth to a baby with one of these large heads, may have started earlier than we had previously thought. Prior to this, the thinking was that the change in female hips as well as the brain size that was pushing those hips to change shape occurred much later but now it looks as if it started up to a million years earlier. What's more, it also seems to suggest that tool use may have appeared *before* Homo habilis and that by the time that precursor to us had appeared we were well down the road to tool use.

This is *not* even in the same ballpark as:



So if you are going to, as you say, 'be a dick about it' when you're right it would help if you're *actually* right. In this case, you thought you were right when you weren't and had you bothered to read the article, you would've realized that. Given that you haven't read Darwin (don't even try to play it off that you have because no one who has read Origin of Species or The Descent of Man would say that Darwin was making 'a suggestion') and it's damn clear that you haven't read any of the modern, very accessible popular science books on the subject because, once again, you would recognize that the theory of evolution is about as established as *anything* in science.

Don't be so quick to crow about how right you are because when it's shown that you're wrong, as I've just done, you don't look like a dick you look like an ass.

Cheers
Aj

As smart as you are your eyes are so shut. That is unfortunate.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Ebon

As smart as you are your eyes are so shut. That is unfortunate.

Normally, I don't copy and paste whole articles. However, since you seem to labor under the illusion I have NO idea what I'm talking about when I write about science (an assumption you've made twice now, this time in the field where I *can* read primary source material) I am going to provide you with the text of an ENTIRE article from Discovery magazine on the same topic as the Yahoo article. You claim that the article, based upon once phrase you misinterpreted, shows that 'Darwin's little theory' is in trouble. You are wrong. Here is a longer article on the same subject in its entirety.

She swung in the trees like a chimp but had long dexterous fingers for tool-making and hybrid feet for walking upright, a major study on the ancient hominid Australopithecus sediba suggested.

Until now, the first tool-maker was widely believed to be Homo habilis, based on a set of 21 fossilized hand bones found in Tanzania that date back 1.75 million years.

But a close examination of two partial fossilized skeletons of Au. sediba discovered in South Africa in 2008 suggests these creatures who roamed the Earth 1.9 million years ago were crafting tools even earlier, and could be the first direct ancestor of the Homo species.

"This is an immensely ground-breaking study. It tells a story never told before. It definitely calls for science books to be re-written," project leader Lee Berger said.

Berger, an American who is a professor at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, and his nine-year-old son discovered the fossil site of Malapa, north of Johannesburg, in 2008.

The area is located within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site, and has since yielded more than 220 bones from at least five individuals; some babies, juveniles and adults.

A close analysis of the pelvis, brain, feet and hands of Au. sediba are described in five papers published in the journal Science.

Based on the most complete hand specimen ever found, Au. sediba had an extra-long thumb and powerful fingers, which it could have used to make tools despite still having a small ape-like brain.
The rare discovery of hand bones belonged to an adult female who may have been about 20 or 30 when she died. Her remains were found near a young boy, whose fossilized bones were also included in the study.

"The sediba hand reveals a surprising mix of features that we wouldn't have predicted could exist in the same hand," said co-author Tracy Kivell from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.


"It has this long thumb, but surprisingly this thumb is even longer than we see in modern humans," she said.

"The wrist was better able to deal with larger loads that it might experience during tool use for example," and it had long narrow fingers "capable of powerful grasping," she added.

"So this mix of morphology suggests to us that sediba likely still used its hands for climbing in trees... but it was likely also capable of making the precision grips that we believe are necessary for making stone tools."

Au. sediba had a small but advanced brain. Its pelvis reflected an upright posture, and it possessed a unique foot and ankle that "combines features of both apes and humans in one anatomical package," said Berger.

The female's foot and ankle bones, some of the most complete specimens ever found, surprised paleoanthropologists because of their odd mix of a human-like foot arch and Achilles tendon, but a heel and shin like that of an ape.

"If the bones had not been found stuck together, the team may have described them as belonging to different species," said co-author Bernard Zipfel from the University of the Witwatersrand.

The analysis by a team of 80 international scientists offers new clues into how the transition from ape to human may have occurred, but also raises plenty of questions about the evolution of our species.

Scientists aren't sure if the Homo genus, which includes contemporary humans, evolved directly from the Au. sediba, or if Au. sediba was a so-called "dead-end" species and the Homo genus evolved separately.

One of the main problems facing paleoanthropologists is that little is known about the skeletal characteristics of the Homo habilis, so even though sediba is well-defined there is an absence of evidence for comparison.

"The fossil record for early Homo is a mess," said co-author Steven Churchill of Duke University in North Carolina. "Many fossils are either questionably attributed to various species or their dating is very poor."

But a long list of all the advanced traits that sediba shared with other Homo species like habilis and rudolfensis "suggests it's a good ancestor of the first species that everyone recognizes in the Homo genus: H. erectus."

So that you won't think I've just made this up off the top of my head:

http://news.discovery.com/human/huma...er-110909.html

Now, you will, no doubt, zoom in on the statement above in green. However, at no point will you find *anything* in the article saying that evolution through natural selection is at all challenged or questioned. In fact, this article assumes that variation and natural selection works. It takes it as read in the same way that it takes as read that if Homo sediba fell, it would hit the ground because of gravity.

There is not a single phrase in that article that supports your conclusion, Ebon. Not a single one. Your arguing by assertion that it does doesn't change anything about that matter. Darwinian theory does NOT hinge upon whether a particular event happened at a particular time in a particular way. It doesn't. So even if we had NO idea how we moved from being very like chimps to being us, the theory of evolution through natural selection would still be useful *and* robust. Because the theory isn't about the specifics of how humans came to be.

Darwinian theory states that in a given population, living in a given environment, there will be variation. If that variation provides ANY advantage then, statistically, individuals within that population will leave around more descendants either because they are more fecund, better able to resist disease, able to attract more or better mates, better able to avoid being eaten or to catch prey. Given sufficient time and these variations will accumulate until a population splits in two becoming two distinct species.

NONE of that is questioned above, Ebon and unless you can find me an article in a *reputable* journal on this subject where your conclusion is supported, I'm not going to pretend that your desire to be right trumps reality. You aren't right, Ebon. Evolutionary theory--which IS Darwin's theory--is not in the least bit challenged by the find written about in the Yahoo article. The fact that you think it does, means either you didn't read the article, didn't understand what you read, or just SO want to be right that you conjured up the meaning that led you to the conclusion

Originally Posted by ebon

You know I hate being right because I can't help but to be dick about it.

And this:

Originally Posted by ebon

"Let's just say I was right about not betting my life on Darwin's little theory of evolution. Don't get me wrong I'm not a creationist or anything I just always thought of it as more of a suggestion but some people just take that sort of stuff as absolute fact. That's all I'm saying.

You're saying that Darwin's 'little theory' is wrong. I'm saying you don't know what Darwin's 'little theory' says just that *whatever* it says you think it is wrong. You will find no one in biology or anthropology who would agree with you that the Yahoo article or the lengthier article above threatens Darwinian evolution in the least bit. Yet, you assert that it does. Now, I think I've established my bona fides on this subject enough to be taken seriously about it. I had written out a longer post, composed primarily of my own explanation, but then thought I'd quote the Discovery article because, as I said at the head of this post, you clearly think I don't know what I'm talking about. I find that ironic because, in fact, I could give a fuller explanation for how Darwinian theory *could* be disproved than you can, even though you are certain that it is wrong. I can assert that definitively because if you knew what Darwinian theory does and does not say, you would know what it does and does not predict. It doesn't predict WHEN hominid females started to have wider pelvises to accommodate the enlarging heads of hominid babies. It doesn't predict WHEN we developed tool use. It doesn't predict whether we started growing larger brains *before* the changes in our hands and skeleton or after. The article above is about those kinds of things. Things that only make sense if Darwinian theory works as the backdrop.

You can assert that you know better about this subject than I do all you wish but until you can demonstrate that--and right now your assertions that my eyes are closed aren't a demonstration of anything other than your ability to make an ad hominem attack--why should I or anyone else believe that the article says what you so desperately want to believe it does? Because the interpretation you are giving to the article isn't supported in the words.

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

One reason I started this thread was to divorce religion from science. The truth of science is logic, and religion is not logical. No religious belief has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So while I can appreciate peoples fastness in their chosen religion, their beliefs are not science, nor logic.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/planet-star-wa...181404397.html

Planet has 2 suns.

[Gráinne]

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://news.yahoo.com/planet-star-wa...181404397.html

Planet has 2 suns.

I saw that . It's like Star Wars.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/whoknew-...-26637702.html


Moby Dick

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/officials-beav...224513566.html

Beaver teeth.