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Ape-Human Split Moved Back By Millions Of Years
E++99 writes in to let us know about a development in paleo-anthropology. It seems that up until now, scientific consensus has placed the divergence of man from the ape line five to six million years ago (based on "genetic distances"). But newly discovered fossils in Ethiopia place the divergence at least twice as far back, and perhaps as long ago as 20 million years. They also largely put to rest any doubts that man and modern apes both emerged from Africa. From the article: "The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago... Beyond that... fossils of early humans from the Miocene period, 23 to five million years ago, disappear. Fossils of early apes especially during the critical period of 14 to eight million years ago were virtually non-existent — until now... [T]he new fossils, dubbed 'Chororapithecus abyssinicus' by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleo-anthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that."
don't laugh too much... there's people out their who really think this way.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Hmm, the immediate implications here seem to be mostly for our relationship with orangutans and chimps, and less so for our chimp relatedness. If true, this gives us a lower bound on the number of years since the divergence between the human/chimp line and the gorilla line, but we still don't know when we diverged from chimps.
I expect they will adjust the molecular clocks to reflect the new knowledge and make a new guess. But the lesson of this whole discovery is that the current models for molecular clocks seem to be a bit lacking.
Last I checked, "apes" were actually paraphyletic—that is, humans and chimpanzees actually forma a clade, and gorillas split off some time earlier (and orangutans before that, and gibbons even before that). So it should really say that the split between gorillas and Hominini (chimps and humans) was earlier than previously thought. The discovery gives no information at all about when humans and chimpanzees split.
"Towards the end of our research period we came across some fossil teeth that MAY be identified as coming from the after the split between gorilla and human ancestors.
Not only that, they MAY be earlier than the previously proposed date for the gorilla an human split."
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The fossil teeth demonstrate that the last common ancestor of the gorilla and human was "out of Africa" (although this has been disputed), it is not a point of real controversy.
This whole article reeks of conditionals, and restatements of non-controversial theories (e.g. " There is broad agreement that chimpanzees were the last of the great apes to split from the evolutionary line leading to man, after gorillas and, even earlier, orangutans"), and there is nothing but speculation and weasel wording in the entire article.
This is just grant-milking, and possibly -- though I hope not -- nationalism and nonsense of the worst kind. NOTHING reported in the linked article is substantive in any sense, and is not worthy of comment or rebuttal unless and until some real theorems are posited.
Non-news. Pass it by.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
You don't seem to understand how it works.
1. _Nothing_ is sacrosanct and beyond questioning in science. "Consensus" just means the stuff we already have plenty of data to confirm, but noone's stopping you from finding new data that shows the limits or shortcomings of it.
2. You are, however expected to present the data and logical train of thought from data to conclusion, if you want to question anything. And more specifically,
2.A. any hypothesis, if it's going to make it to "theory", is supposed to explain the data we already have.
2.B. if we're to replace an existing theory with a more complicated one, well, Occam's Razor still applies. We don't do complexity for complexity sake. You're supposed to show exactly what wasn't adequately explained by the old theory, but follows naturally and reproducibly from yours.
To pick an example out of the hat, take general relativity:
1. Yes, even something as accepted as newtonian gravity could be questioned, but
2. It had to show the data and maths that people can examine and decide for themselves. Among other things, as I was saying: (A) It still had to match the measured data. E.g., applying general relativity to an apple, still had to match the measured time to fall. And (B) it had to be useful on at least one case where newtonian gravity doesn't produce the measured results. E.g., light deflection near a massive star.
Anyway, I'm surprised at the number of people who don't understand one of the two. We have no shortage of nutcases who either:
1. treat science as some fucked-up religion. (I'd give more examples, but you only have to look at the wave of retards postings stuff along the lines of "nooo, don't try to think about it! You're not worthy enough to question these guys!" each time a science or tech story comes up and someone dares ask "well, then how did they solve well known problem X?")
2. think that "questioning" or "investigation" means making up bullshit, supported by nothing more than handwaving, generous application of logical fallacies, plus a lot of wishful thinking.
In a nutshell, noone's stopping you from questioning any theory you wish. Take your pick, really. You may not necessarily get a grant, but noone's stopping you. Who knows? You might even be right. But show us the hard, reproducible data you base that on. If you don't, well, then you qualify as a crackpot. We're still not stopping you, but we might do mean things like point and laugh.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I personally don't lend much credence to creationism- but I don't see why they don't just say "ok, so we might have been a bit wrong about the timeline". After all, the bible was written by men (who are fallible, no matter what you think of God) in another language and then tranlated to english, a number of different ways. Ah, but therein lies the rub, if you accept that the bible isn't a 100% literal account of God's law, then much of the religion breaks down- especially for the more orthodox end of the spectrum. I personally think our existence is a miricle and have witnessed some real miricles myself- but I am a scientist sort of mind, how can this be? I subscribe to the belief that the bible is a set of stories, based on truth or not, but that present an intended meaning and set of guidelines to live by. I think to some extent, you can and have to pick and choose what was intended because we can't hear ir from "the horses mouth". I think if you try to be good to other people and not let harm come to someone in the immediate where trying could have at least a chance of helping, and you do think about the whole "WWJD" bit (whether you believe in him or not- just replace the J with some person of upstanding morals). If you try and be the best you can, admit and try to work on your flaws, you're living right, whether you believe in 1 god, no gods, or 100 gods. If you're atheist and you treat people right, you're ok by me. If you're of some religion and think killing in the name of your deity is ok, you maybe have something wrong with your level of thinking. I think evolution can fit in with christianity. What better way to create things the best they can be than evolution? Our existence, no matter how far back you figure it with science comes down to something impossible creating something from nothing and even religion never would be able to answer the question of where their deity and the space he resides in came from. Its all a great mystery, enjoy it, don't fight, and be the best you can be.
Is that so heretical?