Time To Re-Think Evolution?

Dakstang

WC's Resident Redneck

This comes from foxnews.com

Skull Suggests Two Early Humans Lived at Same Time


Wednesday, August 08, 2007


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 paleontologist Meave 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.

'Lucy' Skeleton Secretly Flown Out of Ethiopia 'Living Fossil' Not So Primitive After All How Giant Dinosaurs Survived Vulnerable Youths Creation Museum Logs 100,000 Visitors in 8 Weeks Scientist: Human Origins Impossible to Pinpoint 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 gorillas, "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, a closely related species, 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.

Slimdust

hmm.. this is pretty interesting.

Slimdust

also.. i wanted to add...

You mean there is a problem with the theory of evolution? Whodda thunk it?

Griff0rd

TNA Moderator

This shows one of two things... 1 there is a problem with the theory of evolution... or 2. there is a problem with carbon dating...

Either way this is going to support fundamental Christian beliefs about the way we became what we are, or the age of the world. To me this isn't a shock and not suprising, and in the run of things doesn't effect me at all, but Im sure this turns a few heads in the scientific community.

Slimdust

haha, i have seen this sticker at times, and now you cant deny it aint true!

Invictus

Hang on, I may have misunderstood the article as I read it pretty quickly but are they saying that homo habilus and erectus liked at the same time?

We knew that years ago. Thats nothing new. Evolution is not a rigid process they overlap, it would be ridicoulus to think that one day homo habilus was alive and then he went to bed and when he woke up they all spawned into homo erectus. It is perfectly sound reasoning to think that at the end of the habilus era and the beginning of the erectus era that they may have lived side by side.

Its like the transition from the Greek Empire to the Roman Empire they overlap by 20 years when they co-existed.

Where did you get this, unless I have misunderstood this article is 100 years out of date and does nothing that anyone how understands basis evolutionary theory didn't already know.

God

Super Moderator

He he erectus.


Sorry but someone had to say it.

Dakstang

WC's Resident Redneck

I think one of the key parts to this is:

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.

Now you are going to probably try and say: What does half a million years mean in the whole scheme of things?

My answer is that it must be pretty significant or this story would not even be posted by any news agencies.

Invictus

No my argument is that we already knew this, even Darwin said that the evolution of man was a fluid event not clean cut and rigid.

This isn't news.

Dakstang

WC's Resident Redneck

They lived together for half a million years.

That seems a bit suspicous to me. If that was the case we should have lived with some other species just a little bit down the evolutionary chain from us for a while. I have never heard of any.