Comments on: Was Lucy’s Child More Apelike?

By: OKCurious

OKCurious — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 05:29:32 +0000

I think we all have to remember that most of anthropology (paleontology, etc.) are fields in which educated people spend a lot of time guessing about things they’ll never have to really prove. So, given that, there is a huge margin for error in any scientific extrapolation concerning fossil remains’ ability to really give us a complete picture. It just can’t be done so we have to live with what we ‘think’ is a sound conclusion.

By: Cryptonut

Cryptonut — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 03:44:06 +0000

Anthropology is evolution, as time goes on, the finds help further clarify the things that are hypothesized or not clearly understood and heavily debated. Just like bigfoot (or any other variations that have been spotted and reported), you don’t know exactly what you’ve got until you have something to study. With this new archeological find, it sounds like they are able to further clarify what Lucy was. But there are always a multitude of perceptions so of course there will never be total agreement. BUT, the capture of a live BF is a whole different story. You can’t deny the existence of it once one has been captured! Of course the debate will continue with what it is and where in the family tree it resides (and that is why I was intrigued by the earlier post on that subject), but that is the lesser of two evils. Now where did that dude go off with the Yarwen?

By: jayman

jayman — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 19:34:11 +0000

“Ugly” is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe people would have less trouble with evolution if we were descended from something we consider handsome and noble, like horses. But as they say, “you can choose your friends, but you’re stuck with your relatives.”

By: MattBille

MattBille — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 18:47:03 +0000

“…but I just cannot accept that one of my ancestors was that ugly.”

Compared to the lobe-finned fishes?

Matt Bille

By: carnivore

carnivore — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 18:08:59 +0000

Maybe we came from apes. Don’t know. I do know in the show Origins of man, They had to do a lot of cutting and reshapeing of Lucy’s hips, to claim she was an ape that walked upright. Money, fame, and the need of grants can have alot of influance in decisions.

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:14:50 +0000

oh, might I just add that that skull looks more ape than man. I’m sorry, but I just cannot accept that one of my ancestors was that ugly.

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:12:05 +0000

This is all what I have been saying all along. I’m pretty sure when Lucy was first dug up the researchers went “Darn, not an other monkey,” and then that day or so got a letter from their funders asking if they found anything with a big hint about the funds possibly running out and that’s when they pulled Lucy’s bones out and yelled at the top of their lungs, “Look what we discovered….” The unfortunate thing about teaching evolution in schools is that the teachers have to teach it as a fact (over all and the specifics) when it is only a running theory. In fact the state of Kansas decided recently to not teach macro evolution (changing from one species to another) because the evidence is shotty at best, but still taught micro evolution (adaptation within a species for survival). The experts and master evolutionists in Britain and many around the world hounded them in almost a grade school manner. Don’t forget that at least for a while public schools also included Nebraska man. I’m not sure if they still teach about him today, it was over a decade ago that I had to hear all this. Nebraska man turned out to be just a tooth, and one that belongs to a living group of boars. Even peking man is questionable. That is why the remains were in transit when they disappeared. The remains were presented to an anthropologist, who thought he saw evidence of filing. Besides, one thing I have learned about what is being taught about evolution that isn’t necessarily true is that the group that is suppose to be the between species doesn’t always go extinct. And just the let these people know, when I was much younger I was quite the tree climber. No, I may not have swung like the apes do, but I wasn’t far behind them with my own way of getting around up there. Say, what are they going to say when the big toe is that of a great ape? I also find it interesting that the fossil is being pulled out of sediment from a “flood”.

By: jayman

jayman — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:32:51 +0000

I don’t really see what the problem is here… the fossil shows a mosaic of pongid (apelike) and hominid traits, as would be expected for such an early ancestor. There is nothing new about “Lucy”’s tree-climbing adaptations either… this ability may have persisted through Homo habilis.

The quoted report is also filtered through the popular press, with the inevitable simplifications and distortions. I intend to read the original Nature article.

By: brineblank

brineblank — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:08:03 +0000

Thanks bennymac…I was implying that. Sometimes in order to secure funding for current or future exploration one has to ‘be careful’ where science leads. Sorry but it is a fact of life and I have crossed paths in my educational career with folks that have (sadly) admitted to this. (And I’m sure some will rant and rave that those people aren’t true scientists and don’t represent the community, etc….but hey, look at our politicians and how they actually operate vs. how they are supposed to operate.) Science is supposed to lead to a finding of facts but often in certain areas of science the outcome is picked first and then science tries to force the round peg in the square hole. I have also had profs in these arenas that have said that they know there are many misconceptions that still ‘hang out’ but it just takes too much time to turn the tide because there is so much current information to try to deal with ‘and that people who are ‘really interested in those areas’ pick up on the info at some time or other. And while some (dare I say most) scientists claim that they allow for ’science’ to correct their findings….sometimes they are a little slow in coming around and the corrections end up on page 47D with a two-sentence blurb.

By: MattBille

MattBille — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:53:20 +0000

There is a very interesting line in that story.. “While the lower body is very human-like, he said, the upper body is ape-like…”

Now, it’s a very long stretch, in fact a totally unsupported one, to draw any connection between this fossil and sasquatch. However, the phrase caught in my mind because Dr. John Napier rejected the PG film on the grounds the animal looked like a half-and-half chimera: the lower body was humanlike, while the upper body was apelike. (See his book Bigfoot).

Food for thought…