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Forums - General - Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate

Orca_Azure on 20 May 2009
dsister44 said:
wait how can this fossil be 47 million years old? earth has only been around for ten thousand max.

it's a plot by them thar crazy librals!  they want to make us  believe that the bible lies so they systematically place these plastic "fossils" all over the world.

/end sarcasm

 



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Slimebeast on 20 May 2009
hsrob said:
Slimebeast said:
RockSmith372 said:
i hate when people think the missing link is just one species between humans and apes. Missing links are any gaps that are not found in the fossil record yet. there are hundreds if not thousands of missing links to humanity. This is probably one way before the primates arrived.

 

The missing links are one of the big problems I have with current evolution theory. It doesn't make sense, unless you believe in punctuated equilibrium or some other spin on how to explain it away.

Btw, pretty pathetic how the University of Oslo is trying to hype this fossil as some wonder find. Hilarious article.

"This specimen is like finding the Lost Ark for archeologists" and "His colleague Jens Franzen hailed the discovery as "the eighth wonder of the world." LOL!

So all possible explanations now and in the future will be 'spin'.  Way to keep an open mind.

 

 I didn't say anything about future explanations. Don't twist my words.

The_vagabond7 said:
Slimebeast said:
RockSmith372 said:
i hate when people think the missing link is just one species between humans and apes. Missing links are any gaps that are not found in the fossil record yet. there are hundreds if not thousands of missing links to humanity. This is probably one way before the primates arrived.

 

The missing links are one of the big problems I have with current evolution theory. It doesn't make sense, unless you believe in punctuated equilibrium or some other spin on how to explain it away.

Btw, pretty pathetic how the University of Oslo is trying to hype this fossil as some wonder find. Hilarious article.

"This specimen is like finding the Lost Ark for archeologists" and "His colleague Jens Franzen hailed the discovery as "the eighth wonder of the world." LOL!

 

This is also ignorance. One: Fossil's are incredibly rare and remains can only be fossilized under very specific conditions. You can't just pick an animal, and a time period and then go find a fossil at will. Naturally there are going to be missing parts. But every year our fossil record becomes larger and larger, and more over what we find is extremely predictable within an evolutionary model. While you can't find just anything like the earths layers are a super market for fossils, you can predict what kind of fossils or features the creatures within certain strata will have and then find exactly what is predicted. The fossil record we have now is vastly more complete than the one we had twenty years ago, which is vastly more complete than the one from fifty years ago, which is astronomically better than what Darwin had.

Two: There will always be missing links because there are no final products. It is a constant gradation from once specie to another, which is why we have ring species. There is no definitive animal within one specie, it is a constant grey line that we fairly arbitrarily divide up. Again look at ring species. If you find one missing link, all you do is create two more on either side of the one you just found as the old joke goes.

But isn't it strange that they've found dozens of specimen that fit the definition of each species of the humanoids for example, like Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens, but none of the" missing gap" species/forms in between?

Where are all the guys that should be in the grey zone between Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens for example?

I find that strange.

 (and punctuated equilibrium was a theory that was invented to explain away this problem. But I guess you guys don't even acknowledge the mystery to begin with)

Rath on 21 May 2009
Slimebeast said:
RockSmith372 said:
i hate when people think the missing link is just one species between humans and apes. Missing links are any gaps that are not found in the fossil record yet. there are hundreds if not thousands of missing links to humanity. This is probably one way before the primates arrived.

 

The missing links are one of the big problems I have with current evolution theory. It doesn't make sense, unless you believe in punctuated equilibrium or some other spin on how to explain it away.

Btw, pretty pathetic how the University of Oslo is trying to hype this fossil as some wonder find. Hilarious article.

"This specimen is like finding the Lost Ark for archeologists" and "His colleague Jens Franzen hailed the discovery as "the eighth wonder of the world." LOL!

Thing is, as I pointed out earlier in the thread there will always be missing links. Every fossil just opens up two smaller gaps on either side.

Also for people studying human evolution this is a huge find, I think its the earliest fossil we've found with opposable thumbs.

 

As for links in human evolution, wikipedia is your friend here.

 

But yes we don't know exact details about human evolution due to the scarcity of fossils, which is why finds like this are so huge.

Edit: Also the reason why the 'missing gaps' are not there is twofold.

1) Evolution takes place fastest when populations are small, as you can see on the above diagram the places where species changes is when a population becomes extremely small. Hence fewer fossils during times of accelerated evolution.

2) The fossils that are found are put into a new species, hence leaving 'missing links' on either side once again. It makes your question kind of pointless.