The human tail bone and evolution.

Nah, we're the little mice-like things that used to scuttle around T. Rex's feet and nibble his leavings. Our closest relatives are the great apes, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangs. They're tailless too. If I remember ri.ht, our common ancestor with chimps was about 10-12 million years ago, so the common ape-human (tailless) ancestor was probably around 20 million years agoi

Dinosaurs is a very ambiguous definition of something because there were so many different types. Which particular line of Dinosaurs do you think we evolved from?

Our ancestral retiles predate dinosaurs by about 35 millions of years.

Example of an early scull:



. . . between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m.

The Hapless-saur line . . .

What's really important is the spine anyways. What's even more important is that it's connected to the brain and tail bone - also referred to as backbone

Earth was dominated by mammal-like reptiles before dinosaurs evolved (about 225 million years ago). Mammal-like reptiles (therapsids) had tucked-in elbows and legs positioned more directly under their bodies, so they were better able to scamper over land than reptiles and probably fed on them. They used the energy, not only to stand upright, but also to supply a warm-blooded metabolism. Although some therapsids were as large as wolves, they were largely eclipsed by two-legged predatory dinosaurs about 225 million years ago.

I guess primates fit into this chain , however if we had evolved as scientist believe from apes then why are apes and chimps and the like still in there seperate form's .Another thing that i need explained is why are there so many different nationalities on earth different colors and languages if we did come from apes how did this diversify in such a short period of time .and we obviously have much greater brain capasity then primate's however dolphins are intelligent by comparison to the human brain .most thing s' that have evolved have superseated there previous form and those earlier lines extinct .

How can you write a paragraph like this:

And then follow it up with something like this:

The first paragraph is accurate, coherent and well stated, but the second paragraph is filled with misperceptions, misspellings and misunderstandings. You seem to be searching for information on evolution, but not really absorbing any of it when you find it. Before coming up with your own theories about things, I think you would benefit from understanding the existing theories (as they are quite revealing).

WHy are you surprised? Hes C&P'd from a website and followed with his own . Hes been doing this since day one. I think theres a belief in a GAia or "united universe" since most of his coherent stuff comes from TWOW. net and GAia.

I was a bit skeptical on another thread when he posted some stuff from Gould and then followed up with gibberish.

So it's not ok to speculate , I don't care what you think of me , they once believed the world was flat , just trying to air a feeling that all is not what your told or read.

I love speculation and hypotheses. However, they must be thought out better.
I.

It would help to distinguish quoted material from one's own. (This joker trashed another thread with an idiotic copy and paste of what was virtually a screen print of a Yahoo IM page, when two short sentences would have handled the job.) It would also help to put one's own words into standard English. To that end, i advise learning standard English (Strine is not standard English).

I strongly suspect that this member is new to the world wide web, and doesn't understand the etiquette of the net, nor how to manage the material s/he wants to post.

How he got to the second paragraph from the first is a great leap of faith. "Only a penetent man shall pass"

I suspect you've been reading some religious bullshit. No scientist believes that humans evolved from apes and chimps--humans have a common ancestor with the great apes a long, long time ago. Nationalities is a reference to nation states, and the idea of nation states is rather a recent one. Instead of saying nationalities, you should say ethnic groups (and you should look up "ethnic groups" so that you can begin to thoroughly understand the concept). The reason there are so many ethnic groups is this: modern human beings (homo sapiens sapiens) have been around for a long time--even those who disagree about how long are talking about a range of from 50,000 to 150,000 years. If one assumes 15 to 16 years for a generation, thats anywhere from well over 3,000 generations, to ten thousand generations. Population growth is a slow process, especially among populations with a high infant mortality rate, and a short life expectancy--it means it takes a long time for large numbers of people to accumulate. This is especially true before settled agriculture, which only began, at most 12,000 or 13,000 years ago. So you have very few people wandering around in a very large world, and becoming separate from one another on a routine basis. It only takes a few generations for the slang of teen agers to become incomprehensible to their grandparents--it would only take a few generations of groups being isolated from one another for new languages and customs to arise.

Skin color is a function of several factors, but melanin is the most important one. Everyone has in their skin structures known as melanin bodies. These absorb ultraviolet radiation (which helps protect the skin) and they give off heat. To aid the protection from ultraviolet radiation, they disperse melanin into the skin. So, the more melanin, the "darker" the skin is, and the more efficiently one's skin can cool off in a hot climate. So dark skin has lots of advantages in a hot climate (hominids--"pre-humans" to use a clumsy but useful idea--came from a hot climate). However, losing heat is a bad idea in a cold climate, so people living in cold climates would not benefit from dark skin, and it would not take very long for humans in a cold climate to lose the dark skin. This can be seen operating in individuals from people with dark skins. In South America, many aboriginal tribes have a custom of putting a bride-to-be in isolation for a lunar month or longer before she is married. In just that short of a period of time, her skin gets noticeably lighter in color because she is not exposed to the sun.

You might ask why people would move to a colder climate. Modern humans arose in a time of ice ages. At the height of an ice age, there is a huge ice cap on the northern hemisphere, anywhere from one to three kilometers thick. In the periglacial regions (the regions near the ice cap), huge herds of grazing animals arose. Near the ice caps, forests did not do well. The cold, powerful winds that come down off the ice cap prevent large forests from forming, and in areas of Eurasia which were later heavily covered by forest, there were vast grasslands in the time of the ice age. Trees would only grow in gallery forests (the band of trees next to a river in a river valley) or on the south facing slopes of hills and mountains. Otherwise, the land was covered by millions of square kilometers of grassland. Grazing animals did well in such an environment, so long as they put on a heavy layer of fat before winter set in. Grazing animals specialize in turning their fodder (the grass they eat) into fat.

Humans in those days lived by hunting and gathering. Gathering takes place at only specific times of the year--when the berries are ripe, when the standing grasses dry out and go to seed, when root vegetables go to seed. So you only gather food at certain times of the year, and then everybody in the band needs to throw down and gather as much food as possible in the shortest time possible. But hunting goes on year round. This was especially true in warm climates in which the meat will not keep for long. You can smoke and dry some of it, but you still need to hunt year round. In the colder climates, the herds of grazing animals were vast--billions of animals. They were all covered in convenient fur coats which you could use for yourself after you had killed and butchered the animal, and they had thick layers of fat. If you render the fat, clarify it by boiling it, it will keep for a long time, and it can be used to store thin strips of meat, as well as berries and grain--there is a food used by the aborigines of North America called pemmican which is made by mixing berries and grains with strips of meat all preserved in rendered animal fat.

So it when humans followed game animals north, they found an incredible abundance. So long as they were smart enough to take advantage of the fur coats, the hides and the fat, they could live and live very well in the cold climate. In that cold climate, they didn't need dark skins, and in fact, pale skin was an advantage. So, you get "white" people. White people will revert to dark skin if they go into a warm climate. The aborigines of North and South America came from eastern Asia at the end of the last ice age. After several generations in warm, sunny climates in the Americas, their skin got dark again. The Hindus of India and the Persians of Iran are the descendants of "white" people who got dark again in sunny, warm climates.

I don't know if you are of a religious nature, and don't fault you if you are. But religion is a piss poor source for information on humans and animals. In fact, most of what they teach on those subjects is utter hogwash. There are not different "races" of human beings. Modern humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, and none of us have "gone extinct." All the diversity one can see in modern humans can be produced in a few thousand years, and there have tens of thousands of years in which it has occurred.

What i have told you is simplistic--it is in some place oversimplified. Scientifically well-informed people might quibble about the details. But i have tried to keep it simple, because you need to start somewhere, and it is obvious that you believe a lot of silly things.

I don't care if im wrong or if I have made an error there just idea's based on feelling's for answer's . I have never typed before extensively, so excuse me , look I wasn't tryn to upset anyone , but if you see thing's in another light and im sorry if the cut paiste wasn't connected , I didn't mean any offence . it's just that I just see thing's in another way at time's as i said we have alot of life here on the planet ,evolution could have changed pre existing life form's , I dont know , it seem's strange that a particular life form from a passed era could just vanish surely in some regard , some of our current animal life are connected you'll agree , I watch documentaries on monkey and yes I see the connection , but on another hand I don't to the human evolution , LOOK im sorry if i have upset anyone here , or spelling wrongly there are huge gap's in our past , as someone posted earlier that the whale crawled of the land and lost it's leg's and grew and turned into what we see today

You are right im sorry for my mumble , yes I am aware of climate and ulta violet light we all feel it here Were I live look I feel stupid and rightly so , but thing's dont all add up in the scheme of thing's like for all we know we are just a molecule on an alien's butt, Dinosuar's are suposed to have been here long before man , you see I am just trying to see another connection it may not be right ,so what , im not disputeing what you have stated , it makes sence , look ive alot to learn .

Doorsmad, you don't need to apologize, you've done nothing wrong. It would be useful if you would learn to cite outside material in a readily identifiable manner, but i'd say no one here is angry with you, and i'd say no one here took offense.

We've had lots and lots of Christian fanatics who come here and try to pick a fight using propaganda from creationist web sites, and they often don't attribute it. We have learned ourselves to be cautious about what people have posted precisely because we have been able to track things down in the past, and have found the sources to often be anti-evolution web sites maintained by religious groups. So, there's always a suspicion about these things.

If you could more accurately describe the things which you consider questionable, there certainly is enough expertise at this site to discuss the things which might seem confusing or contradictory to you.

DOORSMAD, The interest that you demonstrate is excellent. However, you need to become much better grounded in the concepts of biological evolution from a standard foundation of science. Many things youve concluded and asked questions about dont relate in the ways youve proposed so Id suggest that some "summer reading" from Miller and Levines excellent texts. The scientist Ken Miller, is a teacher from Brown University and has compiled one of the most used, if not THE most used textbook on biology and evolution in the US. He has a good website and a series of blogs that are foundational . If youre not a high school student, dont feel bad because Millers book is very adaptable to many levels of knowledge and interesthttp://www.millerandlevine.com/km/textbooks/index.html