Posted on 05/18/2008 8:47:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The first-ever chimpanzee fossils were recently discovered in an area previously thought to be unsuitable for chimps. Fossils from human ancestors were also found nearby.
Although researchers have only found a few chimp teeth, the discovery could cause a shake-up in the theories of human evolution.
“We know today if you go to western and central Africa that humans and chimps live in similar and neighboring environments,” said Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist at the California Academy of Sciences. “This is the first evidence in the fossil record that they coexisted in the same place in the past.”
It had previously been thought that chimps never lived in the arid Rift Valley — they prefer more lush environments like the Congo and jungles of western Africa. For years, scientists believed that early human ancestors left the jungles and moved east to the less wooded grasslands, and that this move caused the evolutionary split between the human and chimp lines.
But now, with the discovery of ancient chimps and humans in the same area, evolutionists may have to rethink what caused humans to become humans.
“For many years people have used this kind of geographic split in environment as an explanation as an origin of humans and bipedalism,” co-author Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut told LiveScience. “People have still retained this idea of a split geographic distribution of chimps and humans. This shows it certainly wasn’t true half a million years ago, and may not have been true before that. We need to look for another reason for the evolutionary split.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
While there is room on the paper to draw another branch to the tree, that is reason enough.
“We need to look for another reason for the evolutionary split.”
Uhm. . . maybe there wasn’t one.
Nah, that couldn’t be the reason. At least not for the true believers and apologists.
uh,... Cap’n Liberal. scuse me Cap’n, the SS Evolution is leaking.
“This is the first evidence in the fossil record that they coexisted in the same place in the past.”
If that place was California, they probably inter-married!
Geez, I’m still trying to figure out who Cain took up with after he killed Able and left to the hinterlands.
Humans and chimps live in the same places now. That doesn’t seem to affect the separation of the species. Two groups do not have to remain separated to evolve into different species. Ring species do it today.
“A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. Ernst Mayr called ring species “the perfect demonstration of speciation” because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. This approach is especially powerful when we can reconstruct the biogeographical history of a ring species, as has been done in two cases.”
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.html
No one is suggesting that all monkeys evolved - the evidence is clear that apelike creatures evolved into more manlike creatures, and that we are now evolving back to more apelike creatures.
OMG! Interspecies dating? How progressive!!
“We need to look for another reason for the evolutionary split.”
And Global Warming has stopped for the next ten years, then it will resume at an incredible rate.
When facts catch up to you, stall, get more grant money, and go dream up some other explanation.
The only great discovery here seems to be that a different Rift Valley environment existed a half million years ago.
Current theory holds that humans and chimpanzees split about 6 million years ago. The split became bold about 3 million years ago, when chimpanzees remained climbing animals, as evidenced by their upper body strength, and humans became running animals, based on their bones, leg strength and musculature.
But chimpanzees are limited by environment, whereas humans can and do roam about everywhere. Importantly, both where chimpanzees are, and where they aren’t.
And we all know the Dems are wearing the monkey’s ring.
You pagans amaze me. Cain killed Able because he got to "know" Eve more often. ;)
What??? Another shake up of the proven beyond a shadow of doubt theory of human evolution.
I wonder if the I.D. proponents changed their theories every other day, what would the evolutionist say?
Cain and Able SLEPT with their MOTHER?!?!?!
Wha...????
Don't we hear from other "scientists" that climates were so different even 10,000 years ago, and that there are mountains now were seas once were? How would they have any clue about "environments"?
ML/NJ
“Ring species” is one of the most ridiculous concepts ever presented.
Internal to the theory the supporters acknowledge how rare the process “is”.
And they have the nerve to use the example of one salamander becoming a another “species” of salamader!!!!
I was being a bit satirical. Were you being a little serious?
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