Fossil RECORD supports Human Evolution

[Peregrine_Falcon]

The Peking remains, now technically referred to as Homo erectus , are clearly human, but primitive... ...Because of the outbreak of World War II, the physical remains [of Peking man] themselves were lost.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/5008_scientific_creationism_evol_12_7_2000.asp

Bah. If it were I, I would not admit to such a foul up.

 

[Morat]

  What? Admit that a massive war caused things to be blown up and lost? Kinda stupid not to. However, just to round out your quote:

Casts, photographs, measurements, and other descriptive material survived the war, however, and can be studied today. Creationists claim that the original remains were those of monkeys, not people. The casts, photographs, measurements, and other data are all manufactured to look more human than were the actual remains, according to scientific creationists.

The creationist claim is untenable. First, Chinese scholars in recent years have excavated at the original Peking Man site, as well as in other places in China, and have uncovered new remains that look just like the older finds. In fact, two skull pieces found in 1966 fit exactly onto two found in the 1930s and all are clearly part of a single skull. Why should modern Chinese scientists go to considerable trouble to continue a fraud perpetrated 50 years ago by western scientists? We have no reason to doubt the recent Chinese finds are genuine. Furthermore, remains of <I>Homo erectus</I> have been found in many parts of Eurasia and Africa by scientists of many different nationalities. The scientific creationist claim that Peking man is a forgery is strange indeed.

 

[Peregrine_Falcon]

How they were lost was not the point. It was just the fact that they were lost.

I personally would like real proof that Homo erectus is the "missing link" between apes and humans. Just because an ape can walk upright or has 90 some percent similar DNA does not mean that it has the brain capacity to "be almost human." A human has morals, beliefs (whether or not they are true), communications,and thoughts that cannot be compared to any animal dead or alive. We were created that way.

Oh and by the way sorry I left some info out. Here I will display it entirely.

Frauds and Hoaxes
Peking Man: A Fraud? The Peking Man remains were found in China between 1927 and 1937 by a number of Western and Chinese scientists. They were measured, described, and photographed. Accurate plaster casts and drawings were made. The Peking remains, now technically referred to as Homo erectus, are clearly human, but primitive. These people walked upright, made stone tools, and were hunters of large game animals. They differed from modern humans in that they had smaller brains, larger brow ridges, and large teeth. Both culturally as well as biologically, they bridge the gap between early and late human fossils.

Because of the outbreak of World War II, the physical remains themselves were lost. Casts, photographs, measurements, and other descriptive material survived the war, however, and can be studied today. Creationists claim that the original remains were those of monkeys, not people. The casts, photographs, measurements, and other data are all manufactured to look more human than were the actual remains, according to scientific creationists.

The creationist claim is untenable. First, Chinese scholars in recent years have excavated at the original Peking Man site, as well as in other places in China, and have uncovered new remains that look just like the older finds. In fact, two skull pieces found in 1966 fit exactly onto two found in the 1930s and all are clearly part of a single skull. Why should modern Chinese scientists go to considerable trouble to continue a fraud perpetrated 50 years ago by western scientists? We have no reason to doubt the recent Chinese finds are genuine. Furthermore, remains of Homo erectus have been found in many parts of Eurasia and Africa by scientists of many different nationalities. The scientific creationist claim that Peking man is a forgery is strange indeed.
A Real Fraud: Piltdown Man. The Piltdown fossil was discovered in 1912 and was hailed by almost all evolutionary scientists as a true "missing link." Most workers accepted it as genuine because it showed characteristics predicted by the accepted evolutionary scheme of the day: the main characteristic distinguishing humans from other animals was thought to be mankind’s intelligence. Scientists therefore presumed that the first humans would have large brains, as had the only known human fossils of the time. But scientists of the time did not conceive of the earliest humans as being quite different from their descendants in brain size. Piltdown had a large, modern skull and primitive dentition: just what the hypothesis predicted. As it turned out, Piltdown was a forgery composed of the skull of a human and the jaw of an orangutan, with teeth carefully filed, and the whole specimen stained to give it an appearance of antiquity. Whoever forged it knew well the expectations of the scientific community, thus ensuring the immediate acceptance of the hoax as genuine.

This preliminary acceptance was not shared by all scientists of the time. R.M.S. Taylor criticized the find as not having a human pattern of tooth wear, and some other critics expressed skepticism as well. But most scientists accepted Piltdown because it fulfilled the correct working hypothesis: that the earliest humans would be distinguished from apes by having large brains. In 1924, a series of fossils began to be discovered in South Africa that in time caused a replacement of the "big brain" model of evolution. These fossils, called Australopithecus had small, ape-sized brains, but human-like teeth -- exactly the opposite of Piltdown. As more of these two-legged early humans were discovered, a revision in the old view became necessary. Piltdown became more and more an anomaly, irreconcilable with increasingly abundant small-brained fossils. For a couple of decades Piltdown remained in limbo and was less and less frequently fit into evolutionary sequences -- or done so with a "?" or other indication of confusion. Finally the matter was laid to rest in 1953 by J.S. Weiner and colleagues, who demonstrated chemically that the skull and jaw belonged to two different creatures.

Piltdown is therefore an excellent example of how science works: the constant interplay between evidence and interpretation. The discovery of new fossils caused a revision in the way scientists looked at human evolution. Fitting Piltdown into the overall scheme became more and more difficult. There was only one Piltdown, and much contrary evidence. Eventually the idea of Piltdown as a human ancestor was abandoned. Another important point is that it was evolutionists themselves who exposed

Piltdown as a forgery, not scientific creationists, and in so doing demonstrated the self-correcting nature of science.

A Creationist Fraud? Scientists have explored the region around the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, since the 1930s, finding hundreds of dinosaur tracks. The geology and paleontology of the area are well known. Scientific creationists claim human tracks are found among the dinosaur tracks, which if true would challenge the interpretations of evolutionists. Contrary to television and comic book portrayals of "cave men" with dinosaur neighbors, humans evolved millions of years after dinosaurs became extinct, and remains of dinosaurs and humans are never found together.

What about the Paluxy River "man tracks," then? Some are, as one wag put it, carvings made by the hand of man, rather than his foot. This is admitted even by the creationists. Other tracks were made by feet, but not human feet: some alleged "man tracks" are modified or eroded dinosaur tracks. When a heavy animal withdraws its foot from soft mud, the mud will flow back along the sides of the track, making an oblong impression which can look superficially like a human footprint; some of the "man tracks" are formed in this fashion. A three-toed dinosaur places most of its weight on the center toe. In soft mud, the center toeprint will be deeper. In some of the "man tracks" presented in creationist books, faint traces of side toes can be seen, suggesting that these footprints are really just eroded dinosaur tracks. These tracks show claw marks at the "heel" of the "human" print, another indication that the track is a misinterpreted dinosaur track. Also, in at least one footprint sequence, dinosaur tracks and human footprints alternate. Either people evolved very quickly from dinosaurs and then back again, or the "human" tracks are just indistinct dinosaur tracks.

These dinosaur prints lack the anatomy of human footprints, although some creationists claim to be able to see "big toes," "balls," and "arches" in eroded holes in the river bank. If the whole bank is surveyed, however, it can be seen that there are hundreds of erosion holes and washed-out places. The irregular shapes are like inkblot tests: one can imagine all kinds of figures. The "human" prints imagined from these erosional features are carefully selected examples that are best described as wishful projections of the hopes of scientific creationists to see what they want to see.

Other evidence also argues against the alleged human prints being genuine. Dinosaurs and humans are not the same size and weight, but both kinds of tracks are sunk to the same depth in the mud. Stride length is influenced by leg length, so dinosaurs and humans should not have had the same stride length. Yet when the distances between footfalls are measured, the human prints are spaced the same distance apart as are the dinosaur prints. Also, the creationist explanation for how human and dinosaur tracks came to lie together seems farfetched. Supposedly, the creatures who made the tracks were fleeing the rising waters of Noah’s Flood. However, creationists recognize that there are several thousand feet of water-deposited sedimentary rock beneath the footprints, and several thousand feet on top of them. Somehow, the Flood must have deposited the base rock, receded long enough for the dinosaurs and humans to run across the valley (leaving their tracks), and then covered the tracks with a tidal wave, sealing -- but not destroying -- the tracks with a layer of mud. This procedure would have had to occur numerous times, because the dinosaur and human tracks appear in several different layers. Many questions remain unanswered by such a scenario.

Dinosaurs became extinct about 63 million years ago; after this they do not appear in the fossil record. For over 150 million years before this date, however, they are quite abundant. If humans and dinosaurs coexisted, one would think that human remains would be found in all or at least some of the hundreds of dinosaur fossil sites that have been explored. Or, dinosaur bones should be found in the hundreds of human and mammal fossil sites that formed during the last 63 million years. The fraudulent Paluxy "man tracks" are offered as proof of dinosaur and human coexistence, but they are not convincing, being rather misinterpreted dinosaur tracks, erosional features, or out-and-out carvings.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/ar...l_12_7_2000.asp

That should suffice.

 

[Jerry Smith]

I personally would like real proof that Homo erectus is the "missing link" between apes and humans. Just because an ape can walk upright or has 90 some percent similar DNA does not mean that it has the brain capacity to "be almost human."

If memory serves, chimps have ~450 cc cranial capacity, Australopithecenes ~500-600, H habilis ~600-700, H erectus ~900 & H sapiens (modern) ~1200.

 

[Peregrine_Falcon]

If memory serves, chimps have ~450 cc cranial capacity, Australopithecenes ~500-600, H habilis ~600-700, H erectus ~900 & H sapiens (modern) ~1200.

Right... Homo erectus is related to us because they have only 75% the brain capacity we do. Not only that it seems here that it is our "closest relative." I am sorry. I would have to say good old Aunt Gert looks a whole lot like Homo erectus, but she sure is a heck of a lot smarter.

 

[Jerry Smith]

I checked around a little bit. I didn't RC, apparently.

Characteristics of Homo erectus are a brain capacity of 800 - 1300 cc, a large face and thick skull, brow ridges and a forehead that recedes. "Tukana Boy" was an African discovery, which shows that Homo erectus had a similar body size to humans. The period that this boy lived in was 1.6 million years ago. (Wicander and Monroe 1993)

http://park.org/Canada/Museum/man/erectus.html

I think there is some confusion over whether H. heidelbergensis belongs with H. erectus or not. The European H. heidelbergensis trends toward the higher end of the H. erectus spectrum, IIRC (this time).

Also, I think I missed modern sapiens. It should have been listed ~1350 cc.

 

[ChaseNelson]

We have to remember, of course, that the 'small' difference between humans and apes (about 1.6% if I remember correctly) is a difference of 48 million nucleotides--which is quite a bit.

Chase W. Nelson

 

[chickenman]

if its 1.6 percent then approximately 2952000000 nucleotides are similar - approx 3 Gbp

 

[Peregrine_Falcon]

Hey Chase buddy!

...a difference of 48 million nucleotides--which is quite a bit.

So all the other nucleotides that, my dear brother just stated, just happened to fall into place so that we are now the most highly advanced "animals." So then I guess you had better tell me how come dolfins, who have "larger" (which means better, right?) brains haven't beaten us to anything. In other words: why haven't dolfins come on land to study us and built tremendous civilization?

 

[OneLargeToe]

why haven't dolfins come on land to study us and built tremendous civilization?

Oh, that's easy: no opposable thumb.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Originally posted by OneLargeToe


Oh, that's easy: no opposable thumb.

Larger brains do not necessarily correlate with greater cognitive ability.

 

[Peregrine_Falcon]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith

If memory serves, chimps have ~450 cc cranial capacity, Australopithecenes ~500-600, H habilis ~600-700, H erectus ~900 & H sapiens (modern) ~1200.

Originally posted by Jerry Smith
quote:
Characteristics of Homo erectus are a brain capacity of 800 - 1300 cc, a large face and thick skull, brow ridges and a forehead that recedes. "Tukana Boy" was an African discovery, which shows that Homo erectus had a similar body size to humans. The period that this boy lived in was 1.6 million years ago. (Wicander and Monroe 1993)

Then he so perfectly says:

Originally posted by Jerry Smith

Larger brains do not necessarily correlate with greater cognitive ability.

Umm... Do I need to say anything here? Hello...

 

[Jerry Smith]

Yes, PF - if you have a point to make about cranial capacity and intelligence, or cranial capacity as it changed over time in the homonids, please make it explicitly.

I can't discern what your position is from the emoticon.

 

[LewisWildermuth]

If I remember right dolphin brains are not "winkled" like ours, giving our brains a much larger surface area in a smaller package.

 

[chickenman]

its the difference in cortex size that makes the biggest difference in cognitive abilities I think... not total brain size

 

[alexgb00]

Originally posted by chickenman
if its 1.6 percent then approximately 2952000000 nucleotides are similar - approx 3 Gbp

The make-up isn't a big deal. My Chevy Cavalier is at least 97% the same in make-up as the USS John F. Kennedy.

 

[seebs]

I don't think that's true at all; a comparison of the blueprints would reveal substantially different designs for almost everything.

By comparison, a dodge Neon and a dodge PT Cruiser might have a *LOT* in common - I seem to recall being told it's the same car with a different chassis bolted onto it.

 

[Morat]

&nbsp; Really? So, your chevy is the same shape as the Kennedy, made of the exact same type of steel as the Kennedy, seats the same number of people as the Kennedy, is powered by an engine that is the same as the Kennedy's, as equal number of cupholders as the Kennedy....

&nbsp;&nbsp; You Chevy is, in fact, very much not 97% like the Kennedy.

&nbsp; If one were to compare the genomes of Chimps and Humans and extend the analogy to cars, we're talking same engine, transmission, shape, size, composition, seating, and steering. With bugs and manufacturer's defects replicated in both. However, the interior might be leather in one, vinyl in another, the grillwork a tad different, and possible have a different type of cupholder.

 

[npetreley]

We had the evidence. It was THIS BIG! Honest! But it got away.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Peregrine_Falcon
In other words: why haven't dolfins come on land to study us and built tremendous civilization?

This take some explaining, so bear with me. Dolphins were once a parasitic virus, which was the first life form. Not having a host, the virus figured its existence was kind of a dead-end, so it became a bacteria, eventually a trilobyte, a fish, which developed legs and moved out on land and became a dinosaur, which became a bird, of which there was this chicken that started a fantastic civilization. One day a wolfbear thingy went back into the water to become a whale. When the chief chicken saw this, he got jealous and figured he'd go develop a spout and become a dolphin (which, incidentally, was what led to the downfall of the chicken empire).

So you see, having been a water-dwelling creature, then a land creature, and then water-dwelling again, he figured he's had enough of this switching back and forth, which is why he refuses to come back on land and study us.

I hope this clears it up for you.