Is it a hoax?

[mark kennedy]

Piltdown man was suspected to be a hoax fossil the moment it was "discovered", due to it deviating so much from other hominid fossils that had already been discovered. It was later confirmed a hoax via chemical tests, but even prior to that, wasn't taken seriously. If the scientific community was fine with accepting hoax fossils, why accept Homo habilis fossils (which you are claiming are fake) and reject Piltdown man (a fake revealed as such by the scientific community)?

There are currently 5 different fossil collections for Homo habilis (the number denotes the number of individual bodies they come from). Each was discovered by a different group of people, and they don't all have the same bones (for example, the first fossil discovered was a lower jaw and a multitude of fragments of a left hand, and one discovered later had large portions of the skull). These people couldn't have worked together, years apart, to ensure that this line of "fakes" matched up with each other.

Fraudulent fossils are quite common, but it's impossible to make fakes that register as the correct age and composition. Since huge discoveries, such as hominid fossils, are analyzed heavily, they always go through tests that would reveal frauds. Piltdown man may be a famous fraud, but it's not the last time a person has tried to fake a hominid fossil.
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-_- says the man that thinks it is so easy to fake a fossil and have it pass chemical tests. Look, I even found a guide to telling the difference between fake Moroccan trilobite fossils and real ones
FAKE TRILOBITES & TRILOBITE FOSSIL FORGERY

If people could actually make fake fossils that would fool, say, museums and private collectors, they would to sell them and make tons of money. It's actually astounding how much a person would pay for 50% of a dinosaur skull.

I've never said they are fake, I said they are chimpanzee ancestors.

 

[PsychoSarah]

I've never said they are fake, I said they are chimpanzee ancestors.

Unlikely, given that their feet have arches like ours, a trait of bipeds, and their teeth are much smaller and thinner than a chimp's. However, direct ancestry cannot be attributed to any fossil in the absence of DNA. They could be human ancestors, or offshoot cousins like Neanderthals are.

 

[pitabread]

There are currently 5 different fossil collections for Homo habilis (the number denotes the number of individual bodies they come from). Each was discovered by a different group of people, and they don't all have the same bones (for example, the first fossil discovered was a lower jaw and a multitude of fragments of a left hand, and one discovered later had large portions of the skull). These people couldn't have worked together, years apart, to ensure that this line of "fakes" matched up with each other.

Keep in mind that creationists generally think that evolution as a whole is vast global conspiracy. Logic doesn't go very far when dealing with conspiracy theory types.

 

[mark kennedy]

No, it really isn't. As I told you before, every time you write this it's wrong. It's wrong when you quote it from the paper and it's wrong when you paraphrase it.

Yea, just like everytime I quote this:

The difference between the two genomes is actually not ∼1%, but ∼4%—comprising ∼35 million single nucleotide differences and ∼90 Mb of insertions and deletions. (Genome Research)
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A fact confirmed by the Chimpanzee Genome Consortium. When you say that divergence is less then 4% it's wrong, is it not?

 

[mark kennedy]

Unlikely, given that their feet have arches like ours, a trait of bipeds, and their teeth are much smaller and thinner than a chimp's. However, direct ancestry cannot be attributed to any fossil in the absence of DNA. They could be human ancestors, or offshoot cousins like Neanderthals are.

The cranial capacity Sarah, brain related genes do not respond well to changes. If it's unlikely that legs, arms and teeth being so different argues strongly against common ancestry then what about something as conserved as brain related genes.

 

[mark kennedy]

Keep in mind that creationists generally think that evolution as a whole is vast global conspiracy. Logic doesn't go very far when dealing with conspiracy theory types.

I never said it was a conspiracy, I never said it wasn't a natural phenomenon. I have been saying that there is no rational or scientific explanation for the 2 to 3 fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes. The fossil evidence clearly indicates a transition leading up to chimpanzees and gorillas, but other then that there are a million years worth of AWOL fossils.

 

[pitabread]

I never said it was a conspiracy, I never said it wasn't a natural phenomenon. I have been saying that there is no rational or scientific explanation for the 2 to 3 fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes. The fossil evidence clearly indicates a transition leading up to chimpanzees and gorillas, but other then that there are a million years worth of AWOL fossils.

So how do you view the acceptance of biological evolution within the mainstream sciences then?

 

[mark kennedy]

So how do you view the acceptance of biological evolution within the mainstream sciences then?

I have no issues with biological evolution, it's metaphysical Darwinism I have problems with.

 

[CrystalDragon]

Straw man. However life got started, it would have involved chemicals available in the environment reacting with one another. Scientists can talk about what happened after life got going, because the evidence is there to enable them to do so.

I've seen far too many strawman arguments on these forums.

 

[pitabread]

I have no issues with biological evolution, it's metaphysical Darwinism I have problems with.

You do know that the current accepted theory of biological evolution encompasses common descent, yes? Or are we about to run into another semantics game where you start redefining things?

 

[sfs]

Then why are they not happening to us?

Because we haven't had a retrovirus that's been infecting us for a sustained period. If we had no treatment for AIDS and waited a few thousand years, then we would probably adapt to the virus to avoid serious illness, and we'd be in the same situation as the mangabeys. Viruses come and go.

These have occurred since:

Which are a tiny fraction of the total.

 

[USincognito]

Well now that's interesting, maybe you would like to take the subject up formally.

You mean like we did 12 years ago?

There is a new fraud that was crafted to replace the Piltdown fraud. Homo habilis, and that is why Piltdown is relevant.

Homo habilis is a much a fraud as Lucy is a chimpanzee. Sorry, but I can only handle so much of your shtick Mark.

 

[USincognito]

Piltdown man was suspected to be a hoax fossil the moment it was "discovered", due to it deviating so much from other hominid fossils that had already been discovered. It was later confirmed a hoax via chemical tests, but even prior to that, wasn't taken seriously.

Objections were being raised as early as 1913, just a year after "discovery" of Piltdown 1, but we never hear about that from Creationists.

And as I pointed out in my forma(l) debate with Mark, most of it's proponents are British and a driving force of acceptance was chauvinism. Surely the "most-advanced" primitive man would be British. It couldn't possibly be African, German or (shudder) French.

 

[USincognito]

These have occurred since:

And as has been explained to you for at least 10 years, the most recent time being last night, those 361 cases of lineage specific endogenization are dwarfed by the 203,000 shared ERVs.

 

[USincognito]

The cranial capacity Sarah, brain related genes do not respond well to changes.

Well, apart from MYH16 allowing for smaller jaw muscles and a larger cranium.
And SRGAP2C causing more dendrites to connect brain neurons making the brain more dense.
And ARHGAP11B causing our neocortex to grow more dense and our brains to develop folds.

I guess apart from these and several other examples the "brain related genes do not respond well to changes".

 

[lesliedellow]

Surely the "most-advanced" primitive man would be British. It couldn't possibly be African, German or (shudder) French.

Quite right to.

 

[xianghua]

No, they're not very target-specific. If they were, we would find insertions in random species in the tree in identical locations. We don't.

we actually do. first: i gave at least one example of such a case with the herv-k . secondly: i also gave about 20 potential cases that cant be ignore. also remember that chimp and human are about 2% different. so even their own orthologous ervs arent realy orthologous but in a similar spots in the genome.

now, take a look at this figure:

Mosaic retroposon insertion patterns in placental mammals

in this case they found several retroposons in orthologous loci that give an inconsistent phylogeny (basically 3 different trees). so basically we do find cases with insertions that contradict the phylogenetic tree (although they arent ervs in this case).

it's also important to mention this claim by dr sternberg:

https://evolutionnews.org/2010/03/beginning_to_decipher_the_sine/

base on this graph:

Figure 9 : Genome sequence of the Brown Norway rat yields insights into mammalian evolution : Nature

another interesting point is that : "PTERV1 does not share high sequence identity to any known retrovirus". as we can expect if retroviruses evolved from the host and not the opposite.

We could carry thousands of unfixed insertions in the population

it's possible. although we need more data to check this possibility. so lets say that it's possible for now.

 

[Beorh]

Are humans and chimpanzees part of different trees, or part of the same tree?

Chimpanzees are from jungle trees usually, but mankind is firmly rooted in the oak tree known as the Ancient of Days.

 

[AV1611VET]

Chimpanzees are from jungle trees usually, but mankind is firmly rooted in the oak tree known as the Ancient of Days.

Yup.

Luke 3:38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

 

[USincognito]

in this case they found several retroposons in orthologous loci that give an inconsistent phylogeny (basically 3 different trees). so basically we do find cases with insertions that contradict the phylogenetic tree (although they arent ervs in this case).

I never get tired of the Some Dudes On The Internet lecturing Steve about genetics.

Its also kind of funny that you note that retroposons aren't ERVs as if it doesn't completely render your mentioning of them irrelevant to a discussion of ERVs.