Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 0/13 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   some questions about Lucy (Australopithicus afarensis}
Apollo
Junior Member (Idle past 5790 days)
Posts: 2
Joined: 05-21-2008


Message 1 of 4 (467482)
05-21-2008 8:29 PM


there are some points that I'd like to discuss about Lucy that haven't been touched upon here from what I've read.
I Love Lucy? | The Institute for Creation Research claims that:
The creature would have stood 3.5 feet tall, about the height of a chimpanzee. Its skull was grossly ape-like, and also about the size of a chimp's, with very little in the way of human-like features. Lucy possessed very long fingers with a decided curve to them, like modern apes possess for tree-swinging activities. From other A. afarensis finds, it is believed Lucy possessed long toes with a curvature that also suggested prehensile and arboreal behavior. Lucy's upright-turned shoulder joint enabled suspensory behavior and her hands, wrists, and arms were powerfully prehensile. And so you ask, what makes Lucy such a great missing link? Angles of bones in the (reconstructed) hip joint and knee joint suggest that Lucy spent part of her time walking upright. That is as strong as the evidence gets that she was related to humans. Virtually no anatomists will support Johanson's claim that Lucy was a habitual upright walker, yet this is what most textbooks boast.
how can Lucy be a transitional form if everything of it is still like a chimpanzee except for maybe spending some time walking upright?
Furthermore it makes a good claim about the so-called footprints:
Remarkably, anatomists are unanimously agreed that the footprints are indistinguishable from those made by modern man on a beach. Rather than admit this as evidence that man and Lucy lived side-by-side in the past, it is claimed that an ape like Lucy must have made the footprints because "we all know" that man hadn't evolved yet. This, despite the fact that it is almost inconceivable that an austro-lopithocine foot could have done it! It is only by circular reasoning that this can be admitted as evidence for human evolution
This website http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/origin_of_man_02.html points out that the afarensis skull is no different from a modern chimpanzee, how can it then be a transitional form?
Edited by Apollo, : No reason given.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added the "(Australopithicus afarensis}" part to the topic title.

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by anglagard, posted 05-22-2008 3:23 AM Apollo has not replied

  
Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 2 of 4 (467489)
05-21-2008 9:17 PM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 3 of 4 (467492)
05-21-2008 9:37 PM


Take a look at the pelvis (below).
That is definitely not a chimpanzee pelvis. In morphology it is far closer to modern human than chimpanzee.
How do you explain this if Lucy is not somewhere on or near the line between chimpanzees and modern humans?

  
anglagard
Member (Idle past 837 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


Message 4 of 4 (467501)
05-22-2008 3:23 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Apollo
05-21-2008 8:29 PM


Your Sources are Lying
Apollo writes:
there are some points that I'd like to discuss about Lucy that haven't been touched upon here from what I've read.
They have been discussed here before. See Message 1, Message 1 and Message 1 for starters. Old timers here with more institutional memory may remember even more threads.
quote:
I Love Lucy? | The Institute for Creation Research claims that:
The creature would have stood 3.5 feet tall, about the height of a chimpanzee. Its skull was grossly ape-like, and also about the size of a chimp's, with very little in the way of human-like features. Lucy possessed very long fingers with a decided curve to them, like modern apes possess for tree-swinging activities. From other A. afarensis finds, it is believed Lucy possessed long toes with a curvature that also suggested prehensile and arboreal behavior. Lucy's upright-turned shoulder joint enabled suspensory behavior and her hands, wrists, and arms were powerfully prehensile. And so you ask, what makes Lucy such a great missing link? Angles of bones in the (reconstructed) hip joint and knee joint suggest that Lucy spent part of her time walking upright. That is as strong as the evidence gets that she was related to humans. Virtually no anatomists will support Johanson's claim that Lucy was a habitual upright walker, yet this is what most textbooks boast.
ICR is lying, but that is no surprise, they lie about everything.
I saw the original fossil, not a cast, at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on March 20, 2008.
First, the pelvic bone is clearly not similar to any of the great apes such as chimpanzees or gorillas. It has both a shorter length and more of a flange relative to the 3.5 foot fossil as a whole than any contemporary ape, excluding humans. It is not as flanged as a human pelvis which shows it is intermediate.
Second, what few finger bones that were there showed no distinct curvature.
Third, the Lucy fossil did not have a continuous femur to tibia. The one femur was from the right side and the one tibia on the left IIRC, also the patella was missing. Therefore any conjecture based upon Lucy's knee joint is from other Afarensis fossils.
Fourth, the statement "From other A. afarensis finds, it is believed Lucy possessed long toes with a curvature that also suggested prehensile and arboreal behavior." is intentionally misleading. There were no feet on the Lucy fossil and findings of feet in other Afarensis fossils shows a clear intermediate stage.
Fifth, the molars were more gracile rather than robust like the great apes yet also considerably more robust than human molars IMO. Once again they showed a transitional form.
Sixth, there were few parts of the skull other than the lower mandible so statements such as "Its skull was grossly ape-like" are obviously intended to mislead.
I saw a clearly transitional skeleton for the reasons listed above, what ICR demands others see is a lie, plain and simple.
quote:
Remarkably, anatomists are unanimously agreed that the footprints are indistinguishable from those made by modern man on a beach. Rather than admit this as evidence that man and Lucy lived side-by-side in the past, it is claimed that an ape like Lucy must have made the footprints because "we all know" that man hadn't evolved yet. This, despite the fact that it is almost inconceivable that an austro-lopithocine foot could have done it! It is only by circular reasoning that this can be admitted as evidence for human evolution
One can look for oneself at Anthropology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, there is a clear gap between the big toe and the rest. Once again ICR is lying as anyone can see for themselves.
This website http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/origin_of_man_02.html points out that the afarensis skull is no different from a modern chimpanzee, how can it then be a transitional form?
Just another dishonest website.
From: http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/australopithecusafarensis.htm
quote:
Diagnostic Features
One of the earliest sites often attributed to afarensis is the site of Belohdelie, Ethiopia. This sample consists of a large piece of frontal bone and four associated cranial fragments. This material has been described as afarensis by B. Asfaw, and T. White finds the specimens very similar to the juvenile Laetoli vault pieces (LH 21) and Al 288-1. However, with the discovery of the ramidus material, the specimens should be reexamined, and determined to one or the other, as ramidus shares many features with afarensis, yet is earlier, with some major differences. The specimens show a frontal squama enclosing the frontal portion of the brain of a size similar to many chimpanzees and gorillas, however, there are several major differences between the Belohdelie material and one or both African ape species, including:
* The lateral corner of the supraorbital torus is vertically thicker than both common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus).
* The roof of the supraorbital torus slopes evenly up the frontal squama, rather than being separated by a sulcus, which is common in the African apes.
* The bone of the squama is thicker than the African apes.
* The outside of the squama that forms the internal wall of the temporal fossa slopes inward toward the midline, rather than being vertical as in the African apes.
* The upper border of this sloping internal wall ends in a temporal line that runs parallel to the back of the supraorbital torus and then angles strongly towards the midline rather than swinging backward at the outside corner of the supraorbital torus and not parallel to it, as in the African apes.
The websites you have listed as sources are dishonest and the people involved do not even follow at least one of the ten commandments.
Edited by anglagard, : get museum name exactly right
Edited by anglagard, : add another thread in first paragraph

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis Bacon
The more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Apollo, posted 05-21-2008 8:29 PM Apollo has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024