bkane said:
Lucaspa,
One reason I don't buy into Evolution is b/c the evidence for mans' progression is recreated using bone fragments (in some cases, 1 or 2) to establish a fully formed being.
None of the intermediate individuals I have researched is "1 or 2 fragments". Now, I can see making a new species classification sometimes on the basis of 1 or 2 bones, depending on what the bones are and how complete they are. But I have never seen anyone make a definitive statement of where such an individual should fit into the family tree based on this.
For instance, 20. A Hill, S Ward, A Deino, G Curtis, R Drake, Earliest Homo. Nature 355: 719-722, 1992. Fossils from Chemeron in Kenya, glenoid fossa, that looks Homo. 2.4 Mya.
This fossil of the lower humerus is enough to classify the bone as belonging to the genus Homo. That particular region of the humerus is distinctive between humans and apes because of length of the forearm and the muscle attachments there (which leave marks on bone). But all the paper and fossil does is push back the origin of the genus.
18. B Asfaw, T White, O Lovejoy, B Latimer, S Simpson, G Suwa, Australopithecus garhi: a new species of early hominid from Ethiopia. Science 284: 622-629, 1999. New hominid species that may be intermediate between A. afarensis and H. habilis.
This one is different. Here there are bones from 5 individuals and together make up nearly a complete skeleton with many bones duplicated.
I am amazed at the pictures rendered with just a tooth and a piece of Jaw bone.
And which are those?
For all we know, maybe God did create other man-like animals, but even if He did, what real factual evidence can be based on such small (and Controversial) speculative collections...without full skeletons (if there are, please direct me to one...as I am open to viewing evidence)
1. Remember that humans are bilaterally symmetrical. That is, if you have the left side, you know what the right side looks like. So you don't need a complete skeleton to know what the rest of the skeleton looks like.
2. Since joints fit together, having one bone tells you what the joint end of the adjacent bone looks like. For instance, having the tibia (shin bone) tells you what the knee end of the femur (thigh bone) looks like and what some of the ankle bones look like.
2. See "Lucy" hanging in the American Museum of Natural History. Or the Turkana boy. There are many more nearly complete skulls and skeletons out there. I'll give a list.
3. In deciding what species the creature belonged to, some bones are definitive. For instance, much of what is interesting in human evolution is in the skull, right? It is the skull that can define what is ape and what is human, even without the rest of the skeleton, right? So, there are a number of complete, or nearly complete, skulls showing intermediate features connecting species in the hominid family tree.
In addition, with the apparent young age of man in comparison to dinosaurs, there should be more lots more fully formed skeletons of all the early ape-like creatures rendering exactly what they looked like, instead of artistic renderings.
There are. Creationist sources just try to keep the information from you. Also, we do have a very good set of transitional
individuals linking A. afarensis to H. habilis to H. erectus to H. sapiens. I'll put that in the next post. The A. garhi specimens above are all transitionals between A. afarensis and H. habilis, having features of both.
Let's say we do have very old human skeletons in existence, who's to say they are or aren't human and just another extinct species of creation....Links are assumed to be what the scientists tell us they are (after much debate amongst themselves) and presented with even a clearer imagination than Walt Disney could have ever had.
Nice ad hominem attack on scientists. Study paleontology for yourself and go look. There's nothing to forbid you. It's not like there is a bar on the door of any biology undergrad dept or graduate paleontology or anthropology department making it an exclusive club.
Links are based on 1) features intermediate between two features and 2) a mosaic of features in the same individual.
Remember what Special Creation (the scientific theory, not your weird version) says: each species was created separately and is distinct from all other species. So, if you get a fossil that has features of two species and is intermediate in time between them (between the first appearance of species 1 and the first appearance of species 2), then the inevitable conclusion is that this is a transitional individual. Special Creation won't make such an individual with a mixture of distinctive traits of two separate species.
Similarly, if you have, say, several specimens of H. erectus with the size of the eyebrow ridges at a mean and standard deviation and have several specimens of H. sapiens with a different mean and standard deviation such that the two bell-shaped curves don't overlap (and they don't) and then you find a fossil skull like the Broken Hill skull whose eyebrow ridges are exactly between the values, then you conclude this is a transitional individual. What else would you conclude? That God made a distinct species halfway between H. erectus and H. sapiens? And then another 2/3 of the way, and another 3/4, and another 9/10? How incompetent do you want your god that it can't make what it wants on the first try?
See the next post.