Here are some interesting facts about human fossils. Did you know that the hominid fossils are so guarded that they are virtually beyond all access by the very scientists who study human evolution and bring us most of the literature about it?
-_- of course they are heavily guarded, do you know how many people would want to destroy them? A person has to have quite a bit of authority to handle these fossils. Same goes for most dinosaur fossils as well. However, it's not like these fossils weren't analyzed by the teams of people that discovered them alone. They have to be verified by outside people, otherwise they could be fakes. There's a creationist guy, I can't remember his name, that claims to have fossils like Precambrian rabbits, but he won't let a single other person, creationist or otherwise, analyze them. I don't know about you, but I would be outraged if such fossils existed, and the person in possession of them wouldn't provide even a sample to one other person in the world to confirm their authenticity. Because, honestly, fossils are pointless if they can't be confirmed to be genuine.
There is some notion out there that these fossils are all just readily available and thoroughly studied by scientists but it’s not true. Did you know that Paleoanthropology is a science that is quite literally always one step removed from the evidence it is supposed to be based on? Oh sure they have “casts” of the bones with which to study, but did you know that the notion that these “casts” are a true representation of the original fossils is also false? A fact that was proven in 1984 when the American Museum of Natural History in NY decided to have an exhibit of the original fossils. Display cases where made to fit the “true fossils” using casts of the original fossils so that when the originals were brought in they would have special cases to go in. The funny thing was that when the originals where finally brought out for display, none of them fit in their cases. Not a single one. My point here of course is to ask the question, “How can we know what to believe about human evolution when the scientists studying it don’t even have access to the actual evidence?”
-_- you know little of cast making. The casts of fossils are always a little larger than the real thing. That, and one has to be extremely careful not to make errors and to check for imperfections. However, this doesn't mean that casts are outright useless, it just means that if one is not careful, they won't come out currectly, and inevitably they aren't going to be absolutely perfect replicas regardless. Not sure why you think that they have to be perfect replicas, though.
Here is another interesting fact. Did you know that almost 4,000 hominid fossils had been discovered by 1976 but yet only 40 were put on display at the exhibit mentioned above in 1984?
Probably the most stable and interesting ones. A lot of hominid fossils are just teeth or partial jaws, and plenty are in no state to be put on display. Plus, not like they are all owned by the same groups.
But oddly the organizer of the event, Ian Tattersalt, was quoted as saying that they had more than half of the entire human fossil record under one roof. That was clearly untrue.
That may have been true in terms of species representation. It's not like every one of those 4,000 was a different species. Looking at the Smithsonian page, there are 17 different species listed as being relevant to the human evolutionary tree, so there must have been redundancy even among the 40 on display for it to only be representative of half the species.
A good portion of the very important fossils were never even brought out to be put on display. Why? Today there are over 6,000 hominid fossils, and yet we hear from paleoanthropologists all the time that “there are sparse few.” It seems to me that what they more likely mean is there are sparse few that fit within their evolutionary view.”
"Sparse few" may refer to specific species. Sure, we do have a large number of hominid fossils, but that doesn't mean that each relevant species has equal representation within the fossils collected. For example, over 1,000 of those fossils belong to Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis. Orrorin tugenensis is represented by a little over a dozen fossils, and there are only 9 Sahelanthropus tchadensis fossils (all of which are cranial fossils). Some of them indeed are few in number.
Many operate under the misguided notion that we can trust what the scientific community is telling us about human evolution.
There's no legitimate motivation for the ENTIRE scientific community to lie about evolution. I'm going to be a part of this scientific community relatively soon, and I absolutely would not lie for the sake of any theory.
But how quickly they forget things like all the doctoral dissertations that were written between 1908 to 1953, on the famous Eoanthropus fossil (aka Piltdown man) before as you know it turned out to be a hoax which went undiscovered for more than 45 years.
Lol, Piltdown man was always suspected to be fake, even in 1908. It was confirmed to be fake in 1953 through a recently developed chemical test at that time, and through the years it has become more and more difficult to fake a fossil, to the point that it's almost easier to just find a real one.
Or about Pithecanthropus, discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 who claimed until his death that he had found "the real missing link." But it was discovered that he had kept a big secret for 30 years. In that same dig, in the same area and level he had also found two very fully human skulls which obviously could not have descended from a specimen that existed at the same time.
They were Homo erectus skulls, and the femur and skull cap the guy found also belonged to that species. He was viewed as a kook for his claims to begin with. He was making the fossils out to be more dissimilar to modern humans than they actually are. FYI, all species in the genus Homo are called humans in paleontology. I know, it's dumb, but you should know that "human" fossils aren't always Homo sapiens.
Or about Sinanthropus, who was also claimed to be a missing link by the scientific community, but also kept secret that it better fit within the range of being fully human than a missing link.
However they finally released this information after ten other fully human remains were found at the same site.
The historical reason I find that it wasn't labeled as Homo erectus in the beginning was that the other discovery of Homo erectus that came before it was dismissed as a deformed ape, lol. Then, a war broke out in the region, making the fossil hunting in the area put off for a few years. A rather unique set of circumstances. I think people often forget the pervasiveness of evolution denial during that time period.
Or what about Homo Habilis announced in 1964 (and widely published in National Geographic) to be the oldest link in human evolution. But actually was assembled from disassociated bone fragments.
-_- the first fossil of the species was fragmented parts of a lower mandible (which still holds thirteen teeth, as well as unerupted wisdom teeth), an isolated maxillary molar, two parietal bones, and twenty-one finger, hand, and wrist bones. The labeling of the species was heavily contested within the scientific community for over a decade, and wouldn't be resolved until more Homo habilis fossils were found. There was even debate within the team that discovered it, but you are acting as if the entire scientific community just accepted it as Homo habilis immediately.
And then there’s the famous Australopithecus aka “Lucy” found in 1974, and publicized to be the oldest missing human link. However many mainstream scientists today are confident that Lucy is no more than an extinct type of ape.
Lol, you are saying that as if humans aren't apes. And you name not 1 of those mainstream scientists for me, that makes fact checking your claim almost as hard as it is empty. Lucy has intermediate traits between human and chimpanzee with an almost even divide between the two. However, you'll notice that no fossil species is treated as if it is a direct human ancestor, because we can't perform the necessary DNA test to determine that (with the exception of Neanderthals, which turned out to be close cousins to our species). And I mean that for scientific papers published in peer reviewed journals, not entertainment pieces from Time magazine and the like. They spout baloney all the time.
And what about Ramapithecu, also promoted as an ancestor to humans but later found to be only an extinct type of orangutan.
You mean Ramapithecus. The initial claim that it was likely a human ancestor was when the "first" fossils of it were discovered in 1932, and it was later revived in the 1960s to much debate and criticism. Once more fossils were discovered, people realized that it was the female of the species Sivapithecus, which has traits more suggestive of it being an orangutan ancestor than a human one. Heavy debate in terms of fossil finds is fairly common, and taxonomy often is altered after more fossils are discovered. You mentioning this entirely upsets your position: it was the scientific community that fixed the error. Your position would suggest that they should have hidden the fossil away and doubled down on it being a human ancestor, but that's not what happened.
Are we getting the picture yet? My intent here is not to slander mainstream science, but rather to demonstrate that my extreme skepticism of paleoanthropology is very much warranted.
That's fine, but you can't assert fossils are entirely unreliable AND demand fossil evidence in support of evolution at the same time. Remeber, it was YOU that demanded transitional fossils. If you aren't going to accept fossil evidence at all, then why did you waste time asking for it?
I know what you are going to reply to all of this, so allow me to beat you to the punch-line. Your about to say that that is the beauty of science is its ability to correct itself…right?
It's one of the better aspects of science, but you jumped the gun, because I wasn't going in that direction. But I kinda have to in order to respond to stuff in your post, sigh. Honestly, I wouldn't care about the fact that the bible and other religious texts aren't self-correcting if everything in them was actually correct.
So here’s my question to that common response, “Exactly how many uncorrected errors exist in science today?” The answer of course would be that we haven’t a clue.
Sure, we don't know, but over time, it gets a more accurate, bit by bit. Also, you don't even want to know how many errors the bible has that people don't make any effort in fixing.
I mean if we knew something was an error then we would correct it and it would no longer be an uncorrected error…right? So here’s my point. If we have no way to know how many uncorrected errors exist then logically we can’t know if science’s “self-correcting” system is really all that efficient.
-_- name a better system. We know the scientific method isn't perfect. Heck, it wouldn't matter if it was, because WE are imperfect, so our application of it would inevitably have errors. However, religious texts like the bible just sit there with uncorrected errors that they demonstrably have. I'd much rather a system that makes an attempt to find and correct errors than one that jumps through hoops to try to deny that they even exist.
Perhaps you are pretty confident when you look at the parade of skulls presented by the scientific community as evidence for human evolution.
Nah, DNA evidence is way better, you asked for transitional fossils, so I provided some. No more and no less. Quite frankly, I could live with fossils not even being brought up in these debates. Unless you found a Precambrian rabbit, because that would be awesome.
But I am sorry I have no confidence in them at all.
-_- then don't ask for them in debates. It's as dishonest as it would be for me to demand examples of people praying and surviving through illnesses as proof of deities. I obviously don't view that as valid evidence for the existence of deities, so I shouldn't waste time demanding crap I wouldn't find convincing just to go on a tangent about how unconvincing I find it to be.
There are three main problems that I can point out, with the fossils and have already demonstrated these problems above. The first is that fossils are often selectively excluded if they do not fit the evolutionary scheme.
No, you named a fake (Piltdown man) that was suspected to be fake on the grounds that it didn't fit with the other hominid fossils that had been discovered before that point, and it turned out to be fake. Then, you named an incorrectly identified fossil that eventually had the identity fixed thanks to additional fossil finds. Neither of which were actually hidden away, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be able to just look them up so easily. I'm actually more excited that the one fossil is more likely to be an orangutan ancestor than a human one. Transitional fossils for the other apes besides ourselves are actually super rare.
The second is that some fossils are downgraded and made to appear less human than they actually are.
Lol, what? The orangutan ancestor? Male Sivapithecus fossils were discovered before the partial female ones that were incorrectly labeled as a different species, and trust me, the skull doesn't look anywhere near human.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Sivapithecus_sivalensis.JPG
The error occurred due to the small amount of fossil worked with, the lack of females of that species discovered before, and the species dimorphism between males and females of that extinct species. It happens, heck, there are a few species for which we only have male or female fossils, and it is suspected that the other gender has been misidentified as a different species (not usually mammal fossils, though, it's a more common problem with reptile and fish fossils).
And the third is that some fossils are upgraded to appear more human like. One final thought here on the self-corrective nature of science.
Lol, why "downgrade" some fossils to appear less human, and "upgrade" others to appear more human? That doesn't even make sense to me, especially not the "downgrade".
In 1911 the world was presented with Neanderthalensis (aka Neanderthal) as another species of sub-humans. It was published as a brutish beast and became the classic icon for the notion of the cave-man concept that indwells much of the thinking of society today.
Lol, as if the ideas of people 100 years ago invalidate modern science. Also, despite having slightly larger brains, Neanderthals weren't as smart as our species, thanks to a larger portion of their brains being dedicated to sight (as indicated by their significantly larger eyes). They also practiced cannibalism... a lot. That's actually why we have DNA from that species; the process of consuming the bone marrow of their brethren helped preserve the genetic material.
It was later discovered that these people were every bit as human as you and I are.
Human in that they belong to the genus Homo, but genetic tests make it indisputable that they are a different species from ourselves.
They were just a little more sturdily built and also several suffered from a disfiguring disease caused by diet.
Nope, that's complete creationist propaganda. We have over two dozen Neanderthal skeletons, and their DNA to boot. They aren't the same species as ourselves. Also, the disease you are thinking of is rickets, and here is what that does to a skeleton
http://www.natural-history-conservation.com/2012/bowedjoseph.jpg
Note the extreme lack of symmetry in the skeleton, and the bendy leg bones. Now, here's a Neanderthal skeleton next to one from our species
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/df/3f/6d/...b1be02--evolution-science-human-evolution.jpg
Notice how it doesn't have the strange leg deformities. Plus, rickets is a disease that is the softening of bone thanks to a lack of vitamin D, phosphorus, or calcium. Neanderthals have far thicker bones than our species. The only similarity between a Neanderthal skeleton and a Homo sapiens skeleton with rickets is a conical rib cage, but in the case of our species, it's much less exaggerated even in advanced, lifelong rickets.
But the thing here is, that the “correction” of this error did not come until 1957, some 44 years after the damage had been done. And people had become so accustom to thinking of them as merely “cave-men” that that view has persistently stuck. The brutish display of the Neanderthals wasn’t even removed from the human evolution display in the Field Museums of Natural History in Chicago until the mid-70’s, almost 20 years after it was known to be wrong. And even then they didn’t totally remove it. They merely moved it to the 2nd floor, along side a huge Brontosaurus, and relabeled it, “An alternate view of Neanderthal.” (So much for self-correction).
XD XD XD you say that in a paragraph in which you mention Brontosaurus, a huge example of self-correction twofold. The original fossil was the result of accidentally putting the head of one species on the body of another in the 1800s, and after that error was caught, there was a century of people thinking no such organism existed after people concluded that both body and skull belonged to the genus Apatosaurus. And that second error wouldn't be corrected for a century, because as it turns out, the head and body are different enough to be in separate genera, and thus the genus Brontosaurus is used once more.
copied from notes taken from a book entitled Bones of Contention.
Oh dude, you couldn't even use your own brain for this post? Makes me sad I wasted time replying to it on your request. But, in summary:
1. I don't consider fossils to be the best evidence for evolution in the slightest.
2. You were the one that asked for transitional fossils. If you were never going to consider them valid evidence, why the heck did you ask for them? Did you presume I and others only supported the theory thanks to fossils?