[Apologetics] Surprising fossils throw kink in human evolution theory

Thu Aug 9 07:14:12 EDT 2007

Hi

This is very interesting ... but there's still no reason why Homo erectus was not the precursor for Homo sapiens - it just means that Homo erectus didn't become extinct until long after the Homo sapiens lineage had become established.  Much like the wolf hasn't become extinct after the domestic dog came into existence, and like the original species in deliberately induced speciation and modern observed natural speciation survives to co-exist with the new species.

If you take incest into account, a grandmother and a great-grandmother can be sisters if the great-grandmother's father fathered her daughter as well.  I have a friend whose father and mother are first cousins once-removed, not incest, but it makes his maternal grandmother his paternal aunt - so he is his mother's second cousin, and his brother's second cousin once-removed.  And I know of several people who have aunts younger than themselves.

There's also recent evidence that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/54902583.html  Whether their progeny was fertile is another question ... most animal species, unlike many plant species, can't interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

God bless,
Stephen

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Art Kelly 
  To: Apologetics Group ; Father Fessio ; Father Peffley ; Father Phillips ; Michele Allen ; Catholic World News ; Catholic Answers 
  Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 3:20 AM
  Subject: [Apologetics] Surprising fossils throw kink in human evolution theory

  Aug. 8, 2007, 2:00PM
  African fossils paint messy picture of human evolution
  http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5037321.html

  WASHINGTON - Surprising fossils dug up in Africa are
  creating messy kinks in the iconic straight line of
  human evolution with its knuckle-dragging ape and
  briefcase-carrying man.

  The new research by famed paleonoloigst Maeve Leakey
  in Kenya shows our family tree is more like a wayward
  bush with stubby branches, calling into question the
  evolution of our ancestors.

  The old theory was that the first and oldest species
  in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo
  erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens. But those
  two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5
  million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half
  a million years, Leakey and colleagues report in a
  paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

  In 2000 Leakey found an old H. erectus complete skull
  within walking distance of an upper jaw of the H.
  habilis, and both dated from the same general time
  period. That makes it unlikely that H. erectus evolved
  from H. habilis, researchers said.

  It's the equivalent of finding that your grandmother
  and great-grandmother were sisters rather than
  mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a
  professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University
  College in London.

  The two species lived near each other, but probably
  didn't interact with each other, each having their own
  "ecological niche," Spoor said. Homo habilis was
  likely more vegetarian and Homo erectus ate some meat,
  he said. Like chimps and apes, "they'd just avoid each
  other, they don't feel comfortable in each other's
  company," he said.

  They have some still-undiscovered common ancestor that
  probably lived 2 million to 3 million years ago, a
  time that has not left much fossil record, Spoor said.

  Overall what it paints for human evolution is a
  "chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than
  this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an
  early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and
  eventually unto us," Spoor said in a phone interview
  from a field office of the Koobi Fora Research Project
  in northern Kenya.

  That old evolutionary cartoon, while popular with the
  general public, keeps getting proven wrong and too
  simple, said Bill Kimbel, who praised the latest
  findings. He is science director of the Institute of
  Human Origins at Arizona State University and wasn't
  involved in the research team.

  "The more we know, the more complex the story gets,"
  he said. Scientists used to think H. sapiens evolved
  from Neanderthals, he said, but now know that both
  species lived during the same time period and that we
  did not come from Neanderthals.

  Now a similar discovery applies further back in time.

  Leakey's team spent seven years analyzing the fossils
  before announcing their findings that it was time to
  redraw the family tree - and rethink other ideas about
  human evolutionary history, especially about our most
  immediate ancestor, H. erectus.

  Because the H. erectus skull Leakey recovered was much
  smaller than others, scientists had to first prove
  that it was erectus and not another species nor a
  genetic freak. The jaw, probably from an 18- or
  19-year-old female, was adult and showed no signs of
  any type of malformations or genetic mutations, Spoor
  said. The scientists also know it isn't H. habilis
  from several distinct features on the jaw.

  That caused researchers to re-examine the 30 other
  erectus skulls they have and the dozens of partial
  fossils. They realized that the females of that
  species are much smaller than the males - something
  different from modern man, but similar to other
  animals, said study co-author Susan Anton, a New York
  University anthropologist. Scientists hadn't looked
  carefully enough before to see that there was a
  distinct difference in males and females.

  Difference in size between males and females seem to
  be related to monogamy, the researchers said. Primate
  species that have same-sized males and females, such
  as gibbons, tend to be more monogamous. Species that
  are not monogamous, such as gorillas and baboons, have
  much bigger males.

  This suggests that our ancestor H. erectus reproduced
  with multiple partners.

  The H. habilis jaw was dated at 1.44 million years
  ago. That is the youngest ever found from a species
  that scientists originally figured died off somewhere
  between 1.7 and 2 million years ago, Spoor said. It
  enabled scientists to say that H. erectus and H.
  habilis lived at the same time.

  All the changes to human evolutionary thought should
  not be considered a weakness in the theory of
  evolution, Kimbel said. Rather, those are the
  predictable results of getting more evidence, asking
  smarter questions and forming better theories, he
  said.

  ART KELLY, ATM-S
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