Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans

jpost.com ^ | 4-16-2007 | JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

[bedolido]

Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids."

The jaw bone of Lucy and the jaw bone of Australopithecus afarensis.

[dfwgator]

“Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

[giobruno]

It belongs to the ancestor of Nikolai Valuev

[Alter Kaker]

1. The headline is wrong. The Israeli researchers didn't prove anything. They made a coherent argument based on a morphological analysis. That argument may or may not be accepted by the scientific community, depending on what other research may indicate.

2. Even if true, this isn't all that surprising. While we're all familiar with the simple linear evolutionary projections we see in elementary school textbooks, the fossil record is much more complex, filled with branches, dead ends, hybridization and other weird stuff. It's often hard to figure out the exact evolutionary path from a series of specimens.

[SunkenCiv]

In before the bloodbath. :')

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[Pharmboy]

Now THAT’S funny...

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/1/l_071_03.html
http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/riddle/riddle.swf?mii=1

[SunkenCiv]

Footprints to Fill:
Flat feet and doubts about
makers of the Laetoli tracks
by Kate Wong
August 1, 2005
Scientific American

The case for A. afarensis as the Laetoli trailblazer hinges on the fact that fossils of the species are known from the site and that the only available reconstruction of what this hominid's foot looked like is compatible with the morphology evident in the footprints. But in a presentation given at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting in April, William E. H. Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History and Charles E. Hilton of Western Michigan University took issue with the latter assertion.

The prints show that whoever made them had a humanlike foot arch, and the reconstructed A. afarensis foot exhibits just such an arch. So far, so good. The problem, Harcourt-Smith and Hilton say, is that the reconstruction is actually based on a patchwork of bones from 3.2-million-year-old afarensis and 1.8-million-year-old Homo habilis. And one of the bones used to determine whether the foot was in fact arched--the so-called navicular--is from H. habilis, not A. afarensis.

[Bernard Marx]

“Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

That's just one of the many problems with dating an older woman.

[elephantlips]

That’s not what Helen Thomas says, a close friend of Lucy’s.

[stockpirate]

I like your tag line, and how true that really is, we only think that gravity is the real ldeal, but at sometime in the future someone may show that it really doesn’t even exist but what attracts bodies is something different.

[Sam Ketcham]

Without the Israelis knowing all the Dems, how can they be so certain she wasn’t some folks ancestor?

[taxesareforever]

filled with branches, dead ends

Ain't that the truth. Lies lead to deadends.

[Alter Kaker]

Ain't that the truth. Lies lead to deadends.

Trilobites are a lie?

[Alter Kaker]

Interesting philosophical take, but not quite what I think I was getting at.

[E-Mat]

“Trilobites are a lie?”

Trilobites are extinct arthropods.
Dead creatures tell no tales; they leave that to the archaeologists.

[stockpirate]

“Interesting philosophical take, but not quite what I think I was getting at.”

I totally understood your point but wanted to get your thinking outside the box. Gravity is something we have recently described, and there may actually be something other than that at play.

At one time science did not believe that rocks fell from the heavens and tey said that it was “fold lore” and superstistion and nothing more.

They held this believe for almost 300 years.

[Alter Kaker]

At one time science did not believe that rocks fell from the heavens and tey said that it was “fold lore” and superstistion and nothing more. They held this believe for almost 300 years.

Scientists denied the existence of meteors for 300 years? Who, when, where? I've never heard of this.

[stockpirate]

They had a show recently on the History channel. And there is a church in France I think that has a rock that fell from space and someone actually watched it fall and where it landed.

The church has had the rock for several hundred years. And people come from all over to see the rock.

Before this time it believed that nothing fell from the sky ie rocks.

And when a rock was shown to be different it was said the ground was hit by lighting.

Google I am sure you can find it.

And FYI, they found a gold amulet in South America that is several hundred years old. And engineer made an exact model only 4 feet long, of this amulet with an engine on it and he could fly it. The amulet looks just like the space shuttle.