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Scientists Discover Common Ancestor of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans
reporter writes "According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters. The 47 million year old fossils were discovered in Germany. The ancestor physically resembles today's lemur. Quoting: 'The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery. According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy. Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.'"
Trying to learn what we don't know is how we grow.
I found the missing link a little while ago though- I had a conversation over coffee a couple of weeks ago with someone who turned out to be a creationist. We ended up having the dreaded creationism-vs-darwinism "discussion". The gentleman in question was extremely stubborn, and his coffin-nail-arguement against darwinism, believe it or not, was that there was "no proof of evolution". I spewed trying to contain my laughter. Needless to say, the conversation ended at that point quite abruptly.
A fascinating discovery though.
http://www.bistolas.net
Slashdotters aren't human, you insensitive clod. Humans are social animals, we on the other hand, are not.
I wanted to see pictures of this fossil. Preferably high-resolution images that I can gaze and and imagine what it looked like with flesh and fur, climbing, running and using simple tools. But no... no such thing. Just a picture of a lemur.
"Is this a revolutionary finding? Shouldn't the common ancestors be in Africa?"
If this is really a common ancestor of Slashdotters, the maternal basement/cave will be nearby and yield further clues.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Since the fossilized creature found in Germany didn't have features like a tooth comb or grooming claw, it could be argued that it gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans, which don't have these features either.
humans don't have a grooming claw? I've got 2 of them!
I believe we were created by god, to evolve. Obviously, thousands of years ago, we were different, but evolved to what we are today. What's interesting, is when I say that, depending on which side of the creationism/evolution debate you are on, sparks controversy from both sides ;)
If the fossils are 47 million years old, they had about 45 million years in which to migrate. Plenty of time to forward their mail, even if the postmasters were Italian.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapid:
Fossils of adapids are known from North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Adapids are one of two groups of Eocene primates with a geographic distribution spanning holarctic continents, the other being the omomyids (Omomyidae)
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You're confusing the birth of modern humans (homo sapiens) with what is being described here as a common ancestor of monkeys apes and humans.
In comparison, it would be like when did the birds break off of the dinosaurs, and when did the blue jay first come around.
Quote
"How is the news being anticipated in the scientific community? 'I honestly think this is an incredible job of marketing,' says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has not seen the report but has read the news. He points out that other fossils of similar age from China, Myanmar, and India have also been proposed as some of the earliest anthropoids. 'At this stage, color me skeptical.'"
Well.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
No. The "out of Africa" idea says that humans originated in Africa, but this is a find of a much earlier period of our evolutionary history. They're not necessarily in conflict because that would still give our later ancestors dozens of millions of years to find their way to Africa.
No he's not confusing anything. These lemur-like creatures were the nerds of their day. Of course they lived in maternal basement caves. Look at their eyes, man. Probably hopped up on Mountain Cacao Pods all the time. They invented the net, and spent all their time trying to find interesting things to put in their nets.
Sadly, this race of proto-nerds did not survive, as the males of the species were singularly unattractive to the females and they were unable to procreate.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I don't even know where to begin with you. First off, you don't seem to know how evolution works. Second of all, social evolution plays the greatest roles in the natural selection of humans. If your standpoint were true, then the Indians and Chinese (the greatest of the populations) would be the "fittest" species. The Africans have been subject to tyranny of countless nations, and now they face the oppression of their own dictators. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but one's scientific success is heavily dependent on luck and ambition, not just intelligence. Otherwise, women would seem extremely inferior to men in science, which is not true because I know countless women who perform better than men academically. It pisses me off when uneducated people start talking out of their ass. I'm not even claiming that you're 100% wrong, just that you have overlooked so many other variables (mainly nurture over nature).
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We've actually known about Rosie O'Donnell for some time now.
You should ask one of them to explain "anecdotal evidence" to you. Then maybe some statistics, including significance levels and sampling theory.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'll believe it when it's been peer reviewed and the hypothesis has been examined by lots of people and agreed on.
Fakery happens. Sheer bad judgement happens. The fact that this has been kept secret is a huge red flag... science doesn't keep things secret.
Yes, this hasn't been peer reviewed yet and we should be careful about accepting things prior to careful examination but the secrecy isn't that big a deal. Scientists keep things secret all the time. Sometimes secrecy is kept until one is ready to go public so that one's ideas aren't co-opted too soon. Another common reason for secrecy is that something seems too good to be true and so scientists carefully examine it many times over before it becomes public. It seems that this second situation is what occurred here. That's not a red flag. It is simply people being careful not to damage their careers or waste other peoples time with results that turn out to incorrect.
I always thought it was in January of 1970...
The difference between science and pseudoscience is not that one is right and the other is wrong, it's that one is at least in theory demonstrably right or wrong and the other, well, the other will forever be unprovable.
Barring a direct revelation from God, such as might happen at "the end times" discussed in Revelation, Creationism is not provable. While the detailed account in Genesis is disprovable assuming God didn't muck up the data, the idea that "God created the Universe in 7 days, then mucked up the evidence so it looked 13+ billion years old" is not disprovable. The Bible is silent on whether God mucked up the evidence.
I guess you COULD call Creationism a science if you said "Hypothesis: God Created the Universe in 7 days. Test of Hypothesis: Wait for universe to end and as God how it began." However, because it is a hypothesis that can't be tested any time soon and, unlike scientific hypotheses which are waiting for the march of technology before they can be tested, there is nothing we can do to find an answer sooner, as a scientific theory it has no practical value. It has much more practical effect on the world as a religious belief than as a scientific theory that is well before its time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, I know DNA from something this old is practically impossible.
Actually that request is nowhere near as tall an order today as it was just a few years ago. You likely know that we have already partially reconstructed the Woolly Mammoth genome and are working with DNA from the (extinct) Tasmanian Tiger as well.
Our techniques have even allowed us to extract proteins from Tyrannosaurus Rex as well as a Hadrosaur for proteomics approaches to analyzing extinct species.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Always maintain a strong healthy skepticism of any "Scientific Secrecy" unless it has a monetary basis, (patent medicines for example) or a strategic value (military).
There is no reason this type of information should be secret. In fact, just the opposite. Publish early, publish often would be the best prescription in such cases.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Okay, maybe they died out because they had no sense of humor.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Japan wasn't really "devastated by two nuclear bombs".
It's a pretty big place. Neither a majority of their population nor their land was even affected by the nuclear bombs.
More Japanese died prior to the bombs in regular combat than the nuclear blasts. The Japanese may have overcome adversity but the Nuclear blasts weren't much worse than the firebombing of Tokyo or the sustained loss of life during combat.
Just as the US wasn't devastated by the World Trade Center collapsing.
The Africans have been subject to tyranny of countless nations, and now they face the oppression of their own dictators. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but one's scientific success is heavily dependent on luck and ambition, not just intelligence.
There's even more to it, Africa's major axis is north-south instead of east-west, which means the continent has a lot of variance in climate with a lot of natural barriers (think about the Sahara) for species, knowledge and trade to cross. This as opposed to North America or Eurasia, both of which have east-west axes with a steady climate that's good for agriculture and diffusion of technology and trade.
Also, Africa has virtually no domesticable large mammals and large parts of Africa have been (or still are) not fit for agriculture at all. Finally, when Europeans started colonizing African countries they had a head-start in technology, and resistance to many diseases they were exposed to living next to their domesticated animals (pigs, horses, sheep), resistance the Africans never had a chance to develop. The same holds for South America, people still like to think the Inca's and the Aztecs where conquered by military force, while in fact their population was decimated by germs like the flu, bubonic pest etc.
Mandatory reading for the guy you responded to and for anyone interested to know why North America and Europe became the most developed societies, and not Africa, South-America or Polynesia (all of which at one point in history had a lead):
http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242498876&sr=8-1
For those who don't like reading, the spoiler: it has nothing to do with intelligence/inventiveness, genetic superiority, laziness or any other form of inherited or acquired traits.
Or a combination of the two.
If you discover a skeleton then you get a monopoly on its data until you reveal it. By keeping it secret you can be certain to glean as many discoveries as possible from it before opening it up to further investigation and interpretation.
If you find it and open it to public scrutiny immediately then you're competing on equal footing with everyone else to draw conclusions and write papers. If you hold it secret for 2 years then you can be sure any significant conclusions and papers are written by your own team and not someone else.
It's like finding a clue in the scavenger hunt. Don't give it up until you've found the prize or need help looking.
Any monkey story will automatically degrade into theology versus Science when the total number of posts exceeds 3. It is really not important whether or not people accept Darwinism - evolution will still be dealing the hand they and their descendants get.
There is no need to argue with them, that is what they want, they want the air of publicity. As for the rest of us Darwinist Protestants, I, like many, celebrate this find and look forward to the addition to the sum total of human knowledge it will provide
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
All religions do eugenics on their adherents to breed them into loyal servants of the administration. Creationism is just a way of obfuscating their misuse of the law of nature that is evolution. Unfortunately, only nature can do genetics, which breeds entities suitable for their environment. Eugenics results in devolution, in the case of religion, breeding subhumans. Hey, if this continues, someday humans might be discovered to be the ancient lifeform from which monkeys, apes and lemurs evolved.
Then the only appropriate classificaiton name would be "Cowardus Anonymous Vulgaris".
If the fossils are 47 million years old, they had about 45 million years in which to migrate.
. . . of course, they might have been carried by a unladen European Swallow from Africa to Germany . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
. . . in the proper context. The true beauty of this is that no one can really understand the infinite. For all you know, you may be your own god. See http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html. On the line between knowing everything and knowing nothing, we all sit so close to nothing that the probability of knowing/guessing the ultimate truth of the universe (even if there is such a thing) is infinitesimal. Therefore, evolution is as likely to be wrong as creationism. The advantage of creationism is that is gives hope to people who otherwise have nothing. The advantage of Darwinism is that it help us understand biology. Being right or wrong in the absolute sense is like arguing about when the next rock will roll on a planet in a galaxy that is one billion light years away. It would seem more relevant to argue about Brittany Spears' next lover.
This is a "Creation Research Institute" talking point.
In actual fact, carbon dating is able to give the ages of formerly living materials up to about 60,000 years old. Any older, and the C-14 that the method relies on will have completely decayed. No material has ever been carbon dated as "millions of years old". I know of several hoaxes involving artifacts supposedly excavated from coal-mines and the like, for example the London Hammer. This is almost certainly what you refer to. The keepers of these ersatz fossils have never permitted them to be dated or thoroughly examined by actual scientists. Draw your own conclusions about somebody refusing to allow their claims to be tested.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors.
No they don't 'believe' they use reason based on radiocarbon dating of fossils and other hard scientific and rigorously tested and reviewed evidence to reach the most accurate and logical conclusion based on findings and observation.
Wow, you clearly do not know the definition of the word "belief." Here you go (From Merriam-Webster): 1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing 2: something believed ; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
Notice that your little screed about evidence is completely irrelevant.
Poster has purposefully written flame bait. The article expresses that this will not answer a creationism vs. ape evolution debate, and that the fossils discovered could be an ancestor of lemurs, monkeys, and humans. Forget your opinions on this matter and mod the post as such.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
"According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters."
Defaming monkeys and apes are we?
Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life, while comparable numbers accept the idea that humans evolved over time.
I just want to point out that evolution doesn't address the origin of life, but only how life changes over time.
However, the two are related, in that they're both necessary to know about if want to understand how life got to be what it is now, and how it's likely to develop in the future.
Some say we came from linguini, some say rotini. I for one believe we are all freshly boiled and come from his noodley highness's image alone.
There's plenty of evidence that simple bacteria could have evolved naturally out of the chemical soup present on earth at that time.
That evidence is suggestive; there are reasonable alternative explanations.
The evidence that humans evolved from bacteria, however, is incontrovertible; there simply is no reasonable alternative explanation.