Evolutionary news

[Minimalist]

another BBC link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2844287.stm

The prints were found in the western margin of the Roccamonfina volcanic complex in southern Italy, in a pyroclastic flow dated between 385,000 and 325,000 years ago.

"We found three sets of footprints. One set came down in a zig-zag, while another showed that the person didn't run but walked normally," Dr Mietto told BBC News Online.

Interesting dates....the Young Earthers will scream bloody murder.

Still nowhere near the dates for Lucy, but interesting all the same.

No one is suggesting that Afarensis was trotting around Southern Italy, though....or Mexico.

[john]

Yeh, Lucy was real monkey like, dig that picture, I think she does look a little bit like the tree shrew, her distant ancestor, according to Darwinites.

as per your argument the entire world, humans, animals, earth and all were created wholesale maybe six thousand years ago. by god.

why do you continue to prate?

a little insecurity, maybe?

as for your frantic expostulations on the tree shrew -

tis very simple.

the tree shrew fossils (end of cretacious, if my mind serves me right) are some of the earliest evidence of mammals. and the mammal line of evolution led to humans, among other critters.

now unless you want to get into the argument that humans are actually advanced reptiles................... and that mammals actually don't exist???????

but then you're arguing darwinism, aren't you?

so, stick to your high christian values.

in either case, your talking at a high rate of speed out of both sides of your mouth, and going nowhere.

i would suggest that you stick to your argument that absolutely nothing existed prior to 6k bc.

then, at least, you could be defined as a fanatic

rather than a huckster.


john


ps.

curiosity question. do you consider yourself a mammal or a reptile, or neither?

[Guest]

You come off, John, as somewhat confused about my position, apparently you don't read for comprehension, but I'll say/ask this, why did some of the tree shrews stay the same, while others supposedly morphed into monkeys, and still others supposedly morphed into humans?

Do you think, john, that goo morphed into you, via the tree shrew?

[Minimalist]

I was reading this National Geographic in the barber shop, today.

This excerpt does not give the whole story but it's tantalizing as all hell.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm ... index.html

This 1.75-million-year-old skull from the republic of Georgia might have belonged to one of the first humans to leave Africa. And it doesn’t look anything like what scientists thought it would.

[Beagle]

Is it possible that the scientists who have given new species names to every early Homo find with significant differences have made our family tree more complicated than it really is?

This is not so complicated to an old die-hard multi-regionalist like myself.

[oldarchystudent]

No one is suggesting that Afarensis was trotting around Southern Italy, though....or Mexico.

No we're way out of that period. But at 350,000 BP it won't be H. sapiens sapiens either. That's H heidelbergensis or erectus, with an outside chance on neanderthalensis, but I don't think he got to Italy(?)

[Minimalist]

No one is suggesting that Afarensis was trotting around Southern Italy, though....or Mexico.

No we're way out of that period. But at 350,000 BP it won't be H. sapiens sapiens either. That's H heidelbergensis or erectus, with an outside chance on neanderthalensis, but I don't think he got to Italy(?)

Yeah.....so why did erectus/heidelbergensis leave Africa?

[Guest]

There it is min, proof positive that tree shrews grew to the size of humans, with the skull structure having morphed to a rather new shape, "much like humans."

[oldarchystudent]

No one is suggesting that Afarensis was trotting around Southern Italy, though....or Mexico.

No we're way out of that period. But at 350,000 BP it won't be H. sapiens sapiens either. That's H heidelbergensis or erectus, with an outside chance on neanderthalensis, but I don't think he got to Italy(?)

Yeah.....so why did erectus/heidelbergensis leave Africa?

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/disp.html - roughly 800,000 BP.

Around 800,000 years ago a large brained, robust hominid, Homo heidelbergensis, appeared in Africa and migrated throughout that continent and into Asia -- but significantly also became the first hominid to colonize Europe. Although it utilized the same Acheulean tool industry as western Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis probably was a more systematic hunter and relied more extensively on the economic processing of animal resources.

[Beagle]

A reminder that the fossil evidence has always favored a multi-regional model.

[john]

No one is suggesting that Afarensis was trotting around Southern Italy, though....or Mexico.

No we're way out of that period. But at 350,000 BP it won't be H. sapiens sapiens either. That's H heidelbergensis or erectus, with an outside chance on neanderthalensis, but I don't think he got to Italy(?)

ok.

just fr. arguments sake, i'll take the position that all the species/subspecies you are talking about are primates, not homo sap.

and, as primates, they had no clue about the coming homo sap. revolution, and no interest in socializing or interbreeding.

so, two part question -

various earlier primate lines died out. why?

homo sap. why so "successful"?

and i'll note that the homo sap. "success" appears to be killing off large parts of the planet at this point.......... to the probable end that it will kill off homo sap., also.

j

[oldarchystudent]

No one is suggesting that Afarensis was trotting around Southern Italy, though....or Mexico.

No we're way out of that period. But at 350,000 BP it won't be H. sapiens sapiens either. That's H heidelbergensis or erectus, with an outside chance on neanderthalensis, but I don't think he got to Italy(?)

ok.

just fr. arguments sake, i'll take the position that all the species/subspecies you are talking about are primates, not homo sap.

and, as primates, they had no clue about the coming homo sap. revolution, and no interest in socializing or interbreeding.

so, two part question -

various earlier primate lines died out. why?

homo sap. why so "successful"?

and i'll note that the homo sap. "success" appears to be killing off large parts of the planet at this point.......... to the probable end that it will kill off homo sap., also.

j

Well- to be completely simplistic, a large part of it is due to the ability to recognize and adapt to changing conditions, in other words, the evolving brain capacity to reason gave successive branches of the hominid tree a better shot at survival.

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/brain.html

Terrence Deacon proposes the frontal lobe as the developmental and cognitive key to human language ability. If so, frontal lobe expansion implies that hominid language abilities may be quite old, perhaps predating the toolmaking abilities that appear in stone artifacts at least 2.4 million years old.

The modern brain shows its greatest expansion in the parietal lobe (P). This expansion accounts for the rounded shape of human skulls in contrast to the flattened "football" form of skulls in earlier species, including Neandertals. Technological, abstract and computational thinking seems to arise in the parietal lobe, and this is the area of greatest relative difference between the two outlines. We might associate this parietal expansion with the appearance of remarkably diverse and refined tool cultures about 90,000 years ago.

[Minimalist]

A reminder that the fossil evidence has always favored a multi-regional model.

But it seems to be losing the war.

[Beagle]

Supraorbital Foramen (brow ridges) :

Nothing in the evolution of man in the past two million years is as visually dramatic as the slow disappearance of the large brow ridges that were prominent in Homo Erectus and Neandertal - to name two family members.

Additional features included protruding facial features and a sloping braincase.

Why the disappearance? The single simplest answer is the use of fire. The first known use of fire was 1.3 million years ago. Undoubtedly it's first use was for light and heat. When it was first used for cooking purposes is uncertain.

The supraorbital foramen are a part of the skeleto-muscular features of the head that allow for strong muscle and tendon attachment for the purposes of chewing food. Prior to the use of fire, man, like other primates had to eat food raw, including meat, nuts, tubers, wild grains. The farther north man lived, the more meat was present in the diet.
(anybody here ever eaten raw game?) Me either.

Fire technology spread quickly, and it "probably" wasn't too many millenia before man learned that food could be tenderized by cooking it over a fire.

If we conservatively figure that man has been eating cooked food for one million years, or even half a million years, his facial features have been evolving. The brow ridges are not needed, and neither is all the previous dentition.

The braincase has been able to move forward (it's often thought that we grew bigger brains, as manifested in the higher forehead, when actually Neandertal had an overall larger braincase.) The so-called "wisdom" teeth, or back molars are now almost vestigial and will eventually disappear altogether.

And still our food gets softer and softer. What will our face look like in another million years. (jokes are allowed here).

Some people may not even call this evolution, preferring to call it a "use it or lose it" law of nature.

I'll continue to maintain that Homo Sapiens did not complete a makeover into European features in only 40,000 yrs.

[Guest]

Hey Beagle, how long do you think it supposedly took to "complete the makeover of Homo Sapiens" to produce "Negroid" features?