No, I just no the difference between an actual answer and flawed rhetoric.
You could call it flawed rhetoric if you like. You have been given a explanation for the lack of chimp fossils but instead of addressing it, you keep asking the question pretending we can't answer.
Naraoia? My only guess here would be those teeth they found in the Rift Valley. In answer to your question your asking in circles, they do.
So humans evolved from a common ancestor to chimps, and the further back we trace our ancestry the more chimp like they appear, then saying the fossils 'look like apes' is not evidence against them being our ancestors, but what you would expect our ancestors to look like.
I never expected you to help me, you bash creationists, that's all you do. I've seen how the fossils have been handled and mishandled and chimpanzee ancestors are being passed off as our's, Taung being the most glaring example.
If Taung look so much like a juvenile chimp, why did palaeontologists stop calling it a chimp once they found adult australopithicuses? And why do you cling to a claim based on incomplete evidence when we have all the evidence we need to identify Taung as an australopithicus? Why use a juvenile skull to try to claim australopithicus are chimp ancestors, when fossils need to be compared using fully developed adult features?
Taung is a chimpanzee.
This deep crescent-shaped sulcus approximates the rostral boundary of primary visual (striate) cortex (Brodmann’s area [BA] 17) in monkeys and apes, and is located much further forward (more rostrally) on their brains than is the case for lunate sulci...
In 1980, I published an independent analysis of the sulcal patterns reproduced on the Taung endocast and six other australopithecine natural endocasts, and concluded that they appeared apelike rather than human-
like (Falk, 1980). (The Natural Endocast of Taung (Australopithecus africanus): Insights From the Unpublished Papers of Raymond Arthur Dart
Dean Falk)
Is Falk saying Taung and the australopithicenes are chimpanzees? Or that one aspect of Australopithicus physiology, some of the pattern of folds in the brain, is ape like and that changes in the way the fold pattern followed the enlargement of our brains instead of preceding it? Here is a quotation from the discussion section at the end of the paper you quoted
To me, the entire sulcal pattern on the Taung endocast
continues to appear apelike, and I still believe that this
was the case for australopithecines in general, despite
the claim of a caudally-located L on the endocast from
Stw 505 (Holloway et al., 2004), which will be addressed
elsewhere.
Nevertheless, certain shape features dis-
cussed above and elsewhere (Falk et al., 2000; Falk and
Clarke, 2007)
indicate that parts of the brain of Taung
and the other gracile australopithecines (occipital lobe,
lateral prefrontal cortex) had begun to expand toward a
human condition.
It, therefore, seems reasonable to hypothesize that
changes in hominin sulcal patterns occurred after cer-
tain cortical regions began to expand and alter their con-
nections (Kaas and Preuss, 2008). It is well known that
bigger brains have more gyri (bulges) and sulci (valleys
between gyri), which is true for primates as well as
other animals.
Increased gyrification appears to be due
partly to mechanical effects in which surface areas of
brains buckle in order to keep pace with the volumes as
brains enlarge (Jerison, 1973, 1991)…
Although ‘‘reorganization prior to brain
enlargement’’ (Holloway, 1988, p 33) may occur at
neocortical, subcortical, and limbic levels, and may
involve changes in neural density, neuroglial cells, and
dendritic branching (Holloway, 1966),
the analysis
presented above suggests that, when it came to sulcal
patterns, reorganization occurred in larger-brained hom-
inins that lived more recently than Taung, and that sulci
altered in cortical regions that had begun to expand ear-
lier (e.g., prefrontal, parieto-occipital), perhaps in con-
junction with an overall increase in brain size. In other
words, dynamically expanding cortical areas eventually
triggered sulcal changes in keeping with the processes
described by Van Essen and Connolly.
www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/falk/Natural_Endocast_of_Taung.pdf
I don't think Dean Falk would think much of your quote mine, or agree with your claim Tuang was just a chimp
Not chasing this in circles, just not going to happen.
Ok you were just waving Paranthropus around without being able to make any serious point.
Her skull was smaller then the Chimpanzee mean average, a prime canidate for a chimpanzee ancestor. The fact that she does represent an older age specimen indicates that chimpanzee variation has not changed drastically.
So you are back to cherry picking again, ignoring the the Australophithicus afarensis skulls larger than any chimp, and the fact that as time goes on australopithicus skulls get larger not smaller.
That's not something I ignored, it's just a pointless fact that was and is off topic.
Pointless I suppose if you just want to cherry pick and ignore everything else we know about australopithicenes.
Yes, so much better to base your conjecture on information we don't have, than on the information we do.
For us to have evolved from apes it would have required an accelerated evolution of brain related genes. The evolution of the human brain would have had to start it's accelerated evolution on a molecular basis some 2 million years ago and within Homo Erectus (considered human by most creationists) would have had a brain size twice that of the Austropihicene and early Hominids:
Early Ancestors:
A. Afarensis with a cranial capacity of ~430cc lived about 3.5 mya.
A. Africanus with a cranial capacity of ~480cc lived 3.3-2.5 mya.
P. aethiopicus with a cranial capacity of 410cc lived about 2.5 mya.
P. boisei with a cranial capacity of 490-530cc lived between 2.3-1.2 mya.
OH 5 'Zinj" with a cranial capacity of 530cc lived 1.8 mya.
KNM ER 406 with a cranial capacity of 510cc lived 1.7 million years ago.
(Source: Smithsonian Human Family Tree)
Homo Erectus Skulls:
Hexian 412,000 years old had a cranial capacity of 1,025cc.
ZKD III (Skull E I) 423,000 years old had a cranial capacity of 915cc.
ZKD II (Skull D I) 585,000 years old had a cranial capacity of 1,020cc
ZKD X (Skull L I) 423,000 years ago had a cranial capacity of 1,225cc
ZKD XI (Skull L II) 423,000 years ago had a cranial capacity of 1,015cc
ZKD XII (Skull L III) 423,000 years ago had a cranial capacity of 1,030cc
Sm 3 >100,000 years ago had a cranial 917cc
KNM-WT 15000 (Turkana Boy) 1.5 million years ago had a cranial capacity of 880cc
(Source: Endocranial Cast of Hexian Homo erectus from South China, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2006)
Homo habilis that would have lived. 2.5–1.5 mya with a cranial capacity of ~600 cc. The next link would have been Homo erectus with a cranial capacity of ~1000cc. KNM-WT 15000 (Turkana Boy) would have lived 1.5 mya and the skeleton structure shows no real difference between anatomically modern humans. The skull while smaller then the average cranial capacity of humans but close to twice that of his ancestors of 2 mya.
That means for our ancestors to have evolved it would have required a dramatic adaptive evolution of the size just under 2 mya sandwiched between two long periods of relative stasis.
I suppose if you want, you can make it appear as though there is this great jump by labelling Homo habilis as ~ 600cc (ignoring the actual range from which was from 510 to 750), and describe Homo erectus as ~1000cc (ignoring the actual range of cranial capacities from 750 to 1140 or 380 to 1140 if you include homo floresiensis). It is interesting that you dismiss with a
the beautifully laid out graph of cranial capacities against time, preferring to cherry pick your dates. Of course the graph show how cranial capacity changes gradually over time.
One such gene would have been the HARf regulatory gene involved in the early development of the human neocortex from 7 to 19 gestational weeks. With only two substitutions allowed since the common ancestor of the of 310 mya the divergence between humans and chimpanzees indicates 18 substitutions as early as 2 mya. (Nature, vol. 443, no. 7108, pp. 167-172 September 14, 2006)The ASPM gene while 99.3% the same for the human–chimpanzee comparison is marked by ten insertions/deletions equal to or longer than 50 bp, all of them located within introns. Primary microcephaly (MCPH) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by global reduction in cerebral cortical volume.(Genetics, Vol. 165, 2063-2070, December 2003) In addition, a total of 2014 genes or ~10% of brain related genes analyzed differed in expression between humans and chimpanzees brains.(Genome Res. 14:1462-1473, 2004 ).
Like I said we don't know nearly enough about these genes to say how it happened, what we do know from the gradual change from the early australophiths, is that it did happen. It wasn't just between habilis and erectus, our brain larger than erectus and our cousin's the neanderthals had larger cranial capacities still. Looking back at australopiths, the later they are the larger their cranial capacities, A africanus are larger than afarensis, and the later australopiths that aren't ancestral to us, like robustus, still have larger cranial capacities than earlier forms.
Evolutionists used to be able to use a 10 million year timeline, then it was 5 million years but when it comes to the most important adaptation you are looking at less then 1 million years and realistically it's only half that.
Sure, if you ignore the real growth in cranial capacities over millions of years.
Darwin's null hypothesis for common descent is not unanswerable:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” (Darwin, On the Origin of Species)
Somehow, I don't think Darwin would be impressed by 'our brains are bigger' as an impossible modification.