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Forums - General - South African fossils could be 'new human ancestor'

Samus Aran on 11 April 2010
highwaystar101 said:
Samus Aran said:
highwaystar101 said:
HappySqurriel said:

A few years back, after a hunter was charged with shooting a polar bear/grizzly bear cross when he only had a grizzly bear hunting licence I started to think that humanoids may not have had an ancestor (or missing link) species in the way that people imagine it. Basically, imagine Africa as a continent being full of pre-human apes that have adapted to their environment as best as they could, and then (for some reason) these species start heavily inter-breeding; being that the mortality rate would be very high for a variety of reasons, the random mixing of traits would result in offspring that were both dramatically more successful and unusually unsuccessful. Within a very short period of time (a couple hundred years) all of the distinctive species could be virtually eliminated in favour of one dominant species.

 

So essentially you believe that rapid evolution occurred? I can see your point when you look at animals like dogs or horses, who rapidly evolved in a matter of a few thousand years when put under new, more extreme, circumstances. Inter-breeding with high mortality rates and high mutation rates would possibly cause rapid evolution.

However, I would personally refute that and say that human evolution occurred over millions of years, but that recent evolution has occurred at an exponential rate due to changing environments such as civilisation and migration.

Dogs were domesticated by humans, that's why they changed so dramatically fast. Same goes for other animals and crops. 

 

Yeah, I know. That's why I said it.

I just made your post a little bit easier to understand for everyone ;)



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HappySqurriel on 11 April 2010
RockSmith372 said:
"Super Evolution" is completely illogical. For those who don't know what it is, it is an idea by biblical creationists that after Noah's Flood, each kind branched and speciated in 4,000 years into all the species that exist today. First off, the definition of kind is unknown and is generally used by creationists for subjective reasons to win an argument due to the fact that no one knows what it is. Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization, claims "kind" to be similar to the scientific term "family". The problem with this is that there are over 12,000 species of ants that are classified(there are potentially 22,000 ant species), meaning that at an average, 3 new species of ants should emerge every year. This has never been observed by science. Speciation takes long periods of time, unless of a freak accident which causes an animal to move into a new environment, and this would have to happen for every animal we know today. 4,000 years is not enough time to have the diverse life we see today.

While I don’t doubt that the creationist timeline is insane, I’m not convinced that evolution has to be as slow as people (often) suggest that it must be. If you actually look at the diversity within a species, and compare the variation between traits, if there is enough evolutionary pressure a species could adapt rather rapidly. Basically, what I mean by this is that throughout history where a small portion of the population had a trait which became a significant advantage for survival in an environment that had changed enough to risk extinction for the rest of the species. As long as this pressure continued, within a very short period of time the nature of the species could dramatically change; and if you had a few of these evolution changing events happen in rapid succession (within a couple dozen generations of each-other) a species might become unrecognizable from what it once was.

I guess the example I would point to in order to explain what I mean is the peppered moth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution).



Kasz216 on 12 April 2010
HappySqurriel said:

A few years back, after a hunter was charged with shooting a polar bear/grizzly bear cross when he only had a grizzly bear hunting licence I started to think that humanoids may not have had an ancestor (or missing link) species in the way that people imagine it. Basically, imagine Africa as a continent being full of pre-human apes that have adapted to their environment as best as they could, and then (for some reason) these species start heavily inter-breeding; being that the mortality rate would be very high for a variety of reasons, the random mixing of traits would result in offspring that were both dramatically more successful and unusually unsuccessful. Within a very short period of time (a couple hundred years) all of the distinctive species could be virtually eliminated in favour of one dominant species.

 


This is possible.  There is a theory that this happened on a smaller scale between 2-3 different types of humans in northern africa.  Though a lot of people see it as not possible, mostly because that's just how it works. 



Slimebeast on 12 April 2010
highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:
highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:

highwaystar101 said:

Come on Slimebeast, don't fall for the AIG myth of "All radiometric dating doesn't work, therefore all the data is useless". Of course the dating methods work to a more than adequate level; if they didn't then why would people use them?

Are dating methods 100% accurate? Of course not.

Are they accurate enough to be used? Yes, very much so.

Here's a video on the subject that explains it better than I can, start at around 2:20 and watch until the end.

 

Either way, I doubt this fossil was carbon dated, they would have used another method. Anyway, they can give the date of the bones to between 1.95m and 1.78m years, this prediction has accounted for the potential accuracy errors in dating and has not given a specific date, but a band of dates (source).

That kind of extreme accuracy is just stupid. I simply don't believe in it.

Why don't you believe it?

Do you understand the process of dating better than the countless scientists who use it on a day to day basis?

Do you know something the thousands of people who think the results of various dating techniques are accurate enough to base their research on it don't?

Because if you know something they don't, then I think you should tell them.

I work with uncertainty every day. I analyze symtoms and findings in patients including blood samples, x-rays and whatnot and it's usually very hard to put a correct diagnosis.

Look at other areas with uncertainty. We can't even measure the global warming today properly. Is it 0.5 degrees or 0.7 degrees global average temperature up in the post-WWII era? (uncertainty in measurement stations, tons of factors affecting etc).

In paleonthology they establish these timelines. They dont look at the monkey skeleton directly to determine it's age. They look at how old the cave was and the animal skeletons (species) in it. And since the cave is assumed to be ~2 million years old (not the rock, but the typical findings in the upper strata) they then play around with some numbers and arrive at a number for the monkey skeleton.

In criminology they find a human carcass, it's usually very hard to estimate the age. They say between 1-3 days, or 1-4 weeks, and if it's years they say maybe he died in the 30's, maybe in the 50's.

In archeology you have constantly these findings where they debate weather an object is from the bronze age or stone age, or bronze/iron even if there's other objects in the same area and strata.

For this particular monkey skeleton, if they claimed intervals like between 500,000 and 3 million years maybe I could believe in it more.

Paleonthologists have an agenda. I can't trust them.

 

When someone comes to you with a fractured leg, you can safely assume that they have fractured it somehow, maybe a fall, maybe brittle bones. You wouldn't say it is influenza. You can be fairly accurate in your prediction because you understand the accuracy of your methods.

What you suggested paleontologists do is just that. You essentially accused them of looking at a fractured leg and saying "how can you say it's a broken leg? Don't rule out the possibility of influenza?".

lol funny!

I'll return to your post more deeply later, Im at work right now.



Kasz216 on 12 April 2010

To be fair too... palentology as far as "so it can climb" etc really isn't any less guessing then archaelogy. It's educated guessing, but mistakes can be made. The biggest issue is when mistakes are made, mostly because experts tend to have an ego about being wrong.

Not saying anything about evolution or whatnot, but for example, said long arms could just as eaisly be used soley for picking fruit etc.



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I_Love_Cheese on 12 April 2010

Very intriguing! Evolution is so interesting =)



finalrpgfantasy on 12 April 2010

another great scientific discovery.