Evidence of the Missing Link Found?

HUADPE writes to tell us CNN is reporting that scientists in northeastern Ethiopia recently discovered a skull that they think may be evidence of the "missing link" between Homo erectus and modern man. From the article: "The hominid cranium -- found in two pieces and believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old -- 'comes from a very significant period and is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human,' said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia."

Comments

Re:Obviously

[ozmanjusri]

O Rly?

Re:Is it just me...

[Charles Dodgeson]

is "the missing link" found every couple of months?

Well, not quite that often, but you are right. Almost all the major finds have been since the publication of The Descent of Man which is when the challenge was first posed. The article itself says that this find joins a handful of others between homo erectus and ourselves. And of course homo erectus is also a "missing" link discovered since The Descent of Man.

This is only one skull. Weigh in the likelihood that it could be just a deformity of something distinctly not a missing link.

You are right. It's happened before. For decades the thinking about Neanderthal was distorted because the first major find turned out to me a severely arthritic and deformed individual. It will take more finds before we can more confidently draw conclusions.

Evolution occurs through generation and elimination of lines. Is there even the slightest evidence that this is not from one of the extinct lines? It's fully possible (and likely) that the species in question doesn't even have modern living descendants.

Again, this has been a mistake that's been made before. (Neanderthals again provide an example). But even if this branch of hominid doesn't turn out to be a direct ancestor, the more we learn about it the better picture of Human evolution we'll have. Also while it has certainly happened that there have been separate hominid species living at the same time, on the whole you don't expect there to be many distinct simultanteous species of something so mobile.

And for good measure, color me suspicious that the estimated age is on the same order of magnitude as the estimated error in that measurement.

The article doesn't say how the dating was done, nor whether further analysis should refine the estimate.

Re:Wrong

[Henry V .009]

Because your Sunday pastor tells you that "leading evolutionists no longer claim that evolution was a slow graduate change" does not make it true.

Here are a few thousand examples of transitional fossils: Talkorigin's Transitional Vertebrate FAQ

Now go and punch your pastor in the nose for passing something off as true that he didn't have any evidence for. I will refrain from doing the same to you because this is the internet.

And only because this is the internet, dumbass.

Re:Dating Fossils

[Jim_Callahan]

(1) Residual magnetism-- moderately reliable, but a healthy margin of error.
(2) Other isotopes-- there's other airborne materials that can be used in ways similar to c13.
Modelling-- as a species that's been building stuff out of earth for a million years or so, we've developed a decent set of analysis tools for the materials involved.
(4) No, they aren't (dated solely by fossils contained, except by your volunteering park ranger tour guide)
(5) Cyclic distribution patterns -- we have these things called 'seasons' that cause regular yearly variations in deposition of sediment, wear on rocks, etc, and there are various other such cycles (lunar, etc.)
(6) Relative distribution-- we can tell what came before what in an area by fossil distributions, comparing distributions gives us a general idea of the timescales involved.

I know you're just trolling, but in case anyone legitimately wanted to know the answer to your question, I figured I'd post enough info on the subject to at least point them toward topics of interest in the field.

_A_ missing link, not _the_ missing link

[kronocide]

It's the OP that is in error, not TFA. There is a big difference between the missing link and a missing link. The former is a 19th century semi-religious concept that has no scientific value. The article however uses the latter phrase, which just means that we had no knowledge of the species that was intermediary between homo erectus and homo sapiens, and now we do, which is scientifically interesting.

Also, see this:
Human - apes, transitional forms

Re:A nice morning with no nuts jobs.

[miskatonic alumnus]

Religion, like theism, entails belief in divinities or gods. Atheism literally means "without theism". So, saying atheism is a religion is like saying that people who are broke also have $100 in their pocket. It's a contradiction.

Re:Obviously

[mrpeebles]

No, the spaghetti monster is, by definition, the most perfect bowl of spaghetti that can exist. Since any spaghetti created by some other being is less perfect than one not created by another being, by definition the flying spaghetti monster must NOT have been created by God, but is a perfect being in and of itself, its existence dependent on nothing else. ;-) (I think I got that argument right...)

Re:Obviously

[Bush Pig]

Pretty close. Anselm's "proof" was a bit more prolix, but still leaves you with that same feeling of, "Hey, wait a minute. That can't be right."

Re:Sure, but it's a big jump, still from H.E to th

[Bush Pig]

Australia won't be producing oranges for much longer. Every time I go to the supermarket, the only oranges (and table grapes) they sell are from California. Meanwhile Australian friut growers in the Riverland are plowing their produce into the ground and ripping up fruit trees. It's a fucking disgrace.

Re:Just that simple.

[Grouchicarpo]

Uh, not quite. There is a lot of compelling evidence for evolution. There's not a scrap for God. Its all faith.

Well, there are a lot of data that get unilaterally shoved into an evolutionary framework. Try viewing the same data in another framework, say Catastrophism. See if the data fit.

As for having no evidence for God, that's a matter of point-of-view. I see DNA as prime evidence for the existence of God; most evolutionists do not. One of my favorite stories is about a staunchly atheistic Research Assistant I worked with in a Pharmacology lab many years ago. About two weeks into a Genetics course, he came back to the lab with a stunned look on his face. When I asked him what was wrong, he said, "We can't exist. It's all too complex for us to be alive." I just smiled at him.

The creationists have faith; this is irrational belief.

Perhaps for some. However, my faith in Christ is not simply, as is so often portrayed, "blind". There's an old Baptist hymn that says, "Trust me; try me; prove me." As I read the scriptures and put God's promises to us through many rigorous tests, I have yet to find Him lacking. If I had, I would surely have rejected it all by now. No, my faith is neither blind nor irrational. God has proven Himself to me over and over in lots of different way. You can say that this God stuff is all in my head, or that I'm weak-minded and just parroting what some fanatics have told me to believe, but my experiences and ability to question authority tell me otherwise.

You may also point out that belief in Christ and belief in Creationism aren't necessarily the same thing. For a long time, I thought that too. When I got out of college with a degree in Biochemistry, I was firm in my "theistic evolution" view; God "created" man via evolutionary means. It took many long years of little niggling things in the back of mind before I started revisiting this issue. I've read books, articles, papers, etc, from the various camps. I've debated with people from many of those camps, depending on which particular question I was grappling with at the time. To bring all this around to the start of this paragraph, the clincher for me as to my view on Creationism now comes from Christ's own words. He spoke of Adam *directly*; He spoke of the Creation *directly*. If the story in Genesis didn't happen the way it is written, then I don't think Christ would have perpetuated the misunderstanding. So when Jesus said, "Here's the way it is...", I'm not about to call the Son of God a liar.
;-)

Re:Pet Peeve

[arminw]

......we see species change over the course of generations.....

None of the changes we have actually SEEN have evolved one species into another. Innumerable genetic experiments of every sort have been done with one celled organisms which make many generations in a short time. Yet not so much as ONE of these has resulted in a new species. E-coli and other bacteria and moths can respond to environmental stresses, but have and always will remain in their own group.

Countless generations of fruit flies (drosophila) have been subject to all sorts of chemical and radiative mutation inducing experiments. Some rather grotesque aberrations have come from these experiments, but all of them are still fruit flies. No jump from one kind or grouping generally dubbed species, has ever been observed to have actually happened in all this experimentation.

You are correct instating that "Evolution itself isn't science", because it is a system or doctrine based on faith, much like any other religion.