More Complete than Lucy

Maybe it gained them more than it cost them.



Still lookin fine.

real life sounds as though he may long to be quadripedal.

Well, for one, she could breast feed her baby without having to stop moving.

I think (but have no backup data other than evidence from laetoli) that the Australopithecenes were a lot that moved about and travelled greater distances than did their pongid ancestors.

but they still probably sounded like chimps rather than people when communicating.

Arms and hands had increasing and varied functions. Tools are still about a million or more years off.
All this is circumstantial evidence rl, only in the respect that we werent around as eye witnesses . However, My time machine isnt working well lately.

Yeah, well, my time machine is in the shop as well.

But when I mention that something is circumstantial, what I am referring to is that it may be interpreted more than one way.

The footprints at Laetoli show a very human like imprint and stride, virtually indistinguishable from modern humans. Are you under the impression that Lucy and her contemporaries simply stood up and started walking as a modern human would with no intermediate stages?

We recently also discussed the scandalous 'reconstruction' of Lucy's foot with an arch from H. habilis. I would be interested in your take on that.

Sure - one solid interpretation based on fact, logic, reason, and valid scientific deduction, and any number of ID-iotic interpretations based on games.


The actual science card which beats your "interpretation game" hand in this instance already has been dealt - HERE.

True. I want the truth, not obstructionism. Timber has twice answered your foot arguments and done it so well, why not let us move on?

rl

When I made a half joke about circumstantial evidence, it was never intended to be so much in doubt that reasonable scientists could interpret it more than one way. Let us review circumstantial evidence.
If a robbery/murder is commited and we find your
1fingerprints on a gun
2 the gun has shown a grooves pattern in the barrel that imparts a pattern on a bullet
3 we find such a bullet pattern in the victim
4 We see that you have, in your possession, some of the stolen goods

These are circumstantial pieces of ewvidence but they dont disagree, in fact, they reinforce
each other.
Such is a cae for the stories of A afarensis and A anamensis. We know when they lived by age of sedimentary deposits and ashfalls with zircons to date.
We can see derivative structures that show the "modernization" of morphological features that imply functional development
We can see the trail of the mass of skull and extremity data from hundreds of separate specimens that we can now present these data statistically.


Youre arguing about foot arches , when, if you could look at the laetoli casts that they have at the NY MNH, you could see that the toes (which align in the footprints) and the inferred gait (the A a walked more on the side of its foot with a heel strike first) This is not ape-like and the footprints are certainly those of A afar or anamensis, not human.
If they were human, wheres the tools?, wheres the evidence of culture?

If you were right , circumstantially, your case holds very little evidence, only a mild conjecture that someone "jiggered " with the creation of a foot arch .

I tend to agree that the use of two, totally unrelated specimens , aged at least a million years apart, is sloppy scientific methodology. O also think that evolutionary scientists, when they found out about this, have all pretty much jumped all over the data. After all, Some scientists were looking for the derivation of a structure that shows adaptation for long walking, but they do this by inserting a derived feature.

Id say, "stop it" just lets not jump the starter gun. Rather than push evidence, lets see what comes out of more fossil data." Well, such has happened. Weve got many A afarensis foot bones that show the derived structure of the big toe. Its forward and not acting like a "thumb". The kneecap, although it doesnt show a locked knee, it has a more modern patella .




I agree. Although, as I said above, I believe that they were "pushing" the clock and subsequently weve gotten new specimens that show much of what they were reconstructing the modern toe and the modern anklebone. I believe that , from specimens and molds Ive seen in Philly, the structure of the "arch", as reconstructed, is a mess. It never should have been done and its an embarrasment . Its an example of where some wag wants to get a publication in NATURE . I would certainly like to see the intermediate structures display themselves either with time or as a "polymorphic " feature (some creatures show an arch and some dont-then the slight advantages are seen with later fossils when they ALL have an arch)

I can say this cause Im no longer in the P or P market, I can be very critical of such data and conclusions, but safe with the understanding that my tenure is not on the line. We have about 40 or 50 "actual "fake" hominids that were presented, bought, then debunked.

Thats why I was carping easrlier that I hope they spend as much time on the environmental and chrono environment of Little Lucy as they do on the bones themselves. IMHO, the contexts of the fossils are half the story. Whenever I read stuff by the entire LEakey clan (all the way from Louis to mary, then Richard) Im always a bit wanting that they hadnt completed their "field work" as well as needed.
Johannson probably, IMHO was one of the first in modern times to contextualize Lucy.

A Time Magazine Article describing the genetic approach to exploring our evolution.

I'm afraid you lost me here Spendius. My signature line is a joke. Babies instinctively grab with their fingers as this is leftover instinctual behavior. And what do the ancient Greeks exposing infants have to do with this thread?

Actually, I have come to appreciate the foot arguments. Without that, timber and farmerman might not have given as much detailed information as they have.

Careful. Agreeing with me might be dangerous to your rep, you know.



What 'many' afarensis foot bones are you referring to?

Site 333 in Hadar has yielded about 13 indivisuals. The over-all A Afarensis head count is over 350 specimens and several other species with direct resemblances have been found. These include the Ramapithecus which was separate but slightly overlapping in time. It was an earlier species that had more ape-like features . Then there is Ardipithecus, which also was bipedal, lived at about the same time as A Afarensis and A anamensis , but was more in an arboreal environment. (This may not be a separate species at al, but for the time being , its been so categorized by the French scientists who found it)
Berillon (2001) had postulated the species dimorphism (actually polymorphism) from a number of specimens. He did some statistical analyses of A Afarensis from Hadar and laetoli and Olduvai. He found that all specimens from "site 333" had medial arches in the foot bones , while those from other areas near Hadar did, not.
Seeing old and derived structure at relatively same times is what wed expect in natural selection. A derived structure that confers a bit of a benefit would be expected to gradually "replace" the old structures.

Dont pat yourself on the back RL, Im at least being consistent. You will agree with anything that is
1Anti evolution

2Pro Creation

The rules Ive always played by was that specimens can only be compared to other specimens with rules firmly in mind. Mixing internal structures among species that are separated by expanses of time that are crucial in their development is not really good science.

fm wrote-



There's no such thing as that.

It's either science or it isn't surely.

shows us that you know little about the subject spendi.

One does as one is able with the resources and assets one has.

An alchemist or a shaman could say that and lay claim to being a scientist then.

You do know don't you that the only symptom common to all who have their heads up their arse is the reflex assertion.

Im always assuming that somehow you will make a point spendi, but I seem to be always left wanting more. I think that Timbers posting of the "beat" poem, sounds just like you, However ginzberg and Ferlingetti always came to a point somewhere in their poems. Whats your excuse?

First fm- congrats on posts on Politics. Very decent.

Have you thought that OSD might be employing Swiftian irony to force people to follow the logic of guns to their extremes.

I'm not saying that's the case but it's a possibility. I could do it.

I don't make points directly. I try to allow people to discover them. I assume an intelligent reader.

OSD has been a gun advocate per omnia extremis since the common ancestor of A2k was in business. Only think ios n ow, his voice has gotten a bit more strident with age.

Thats another subject entirely