EvC Forum: New Species of Homo Discovered: Homo naledi

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Topic: New Species of Homo Discovered: Homo naledi

dwise1

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Message 151 of 163 (769362)
09-20-2015 2:16 AM

Reply to: Message 150 by Coyote
09-20-2015 12:36 AM

I started studying "creation science" circa 1981/1982. In the late 1980's on CompuServe, I was actively discussing and contributing.

Circa 1990, there was that most rare of rarities: an honest creationist. Merle Hertzler was a dedicated creationist, but he was an honest one. Most creationists have been converted, so they are aware of the inherent problems of their position. IOW, most creationists know full well where their weaknesses lie and to keep well away from them.

Instead, Merle would fearlessly research all leads. Which lead to this (http://www.oocities.org/questioningpage/Evolve2.html):

quote:
An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould's Ten Little Piggies . I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children's book, I should be able to find that book. (I thought I was so funny). I borrowed the book, and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals' ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, "Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38." That's it. That's all it said. But it was soon to have a huge impact on me. You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to the University of Pennsylvania library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet, and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn't believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously, but, before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.

On my next trip to the university, I found my way to the biomedical library and located the journal archives. I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligentl

Within a year, Merle Hertzler was a dedicated opponent of "creation science." Strictly from the evidence.

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Faith

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Message 152 of 163 (769364)
09-20-2015 6:18 AM

Reply to: Message 151 by dwise1
09-20-2015 2:16 AM

there's just something funny about the transitionals idea

MOVED THIS POST TO THE OTHER THREAD AS PER RAZD'S REQUEST. Hid this one.

Yes I was going to leave the thread but then dwise posted this story of a creationist who converted to an evolutionist on the basis of a specific experience with a scientific journal, and I found myself pondering it and objecting to it, and I have questions I just HAVE to raise about it.

It's convincing enough as presented:

I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligent...

The part I put in small type, about the medical students who might operate on him is just irrelevant emotional puff. Knowledge of human anatomy they certainly need, but there's no way reptile-mammal evolution could help them in the slightest to operate on a human being.

Anyway, I find myself having the same sorts of questions I had about Dr. A's skulls. The supposed evolutionary sequence is just too pat, too "just so" to be realistic. Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation? Doesn't evolution ever make mistakes? But of course you'll say it does, all the time, and yet this sort of perfect sequence is what you give for evidence. How did we get this neat progression of skulls from small cranial capacity to large human cranial capacity with such plausible morphological gradations from one to another of the skulls? How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host?

Malcolm agreed in Message 138* that the skull sequence IS artificial in the sense that "many" of the types are not considered to be in the genetic line suggested by the linear arrangement of the skulls, but thought to be separate lines of development. That alone should raise an eyebrow because the presentation obviously implies a direct line of genetic descent from one skull type to the next. Without those particular types in the genetic line, how then do you get from chimp to human skull or type to type within the human line? You've got no ladder without those. Isn't there some degree of self-delusion going on here?

First, reality produces variations, not gradatons. Microevolution creates variations, not smooth gradations. I say more about this in my footnote below. There is no gradation from one trilobite type to another in the fossil record, for instance, there are only populations of different types that happen to have been buried at different levels of the strata. So why should there be gradations between skulls or ear bones rather than just many different variations? There is an enormous variety within some species of living plants for instance, each with its own qualities and characteristics, but no clear gradation. The Pod Mrcaru lizards really should have been followed up with further experiments. Other groups of pairs from the original population should also have been isolated for thirty years. Then groups of pairs from those new populations again isolated. My guess is you'd get lots of variations on lizards, assuming there was sufficient genetic diversity in the original population for that to occur. I'd guess that the chance f a similar large-headed type evolving from another random set is very low, because any particular phenotype that develops from a small isolated population is the result of the pecular gene frequencies of that small population, and those are not going to be identical from population to population. You should end up with a whole bunch of different types of lizards all from that original population.

THAT is genetic reality. Linear gradation in genetic descent doesn't happen in nature, so why should it be expected in the fossil record?

Yes, it sure LOOKS like it happened according to those skulls and that journal full of supposed transitional types of ear bones. I don't know the explanation but I have to doubt it all.

Second, microevolution does not need the millions of years supposedly objectively dated between fossil skulls and reptile-to-mammal ear bones. As the Pod Mrcaru example shows, thirty years is plenty when you have an isolated small population, and nature should create such isolated populations frequently enough to be the explanation for the different breeds of fossils too.

Dates. Sure seems open-and-shut when you've got each skull dated, each example of reptilian or mammalian ear bones dated, and they all so nicely follow one from another just as evolution says they should. It's the dating of the specimens that seals the deal, right, so unless one wants to accuse all researchers in the area of outright fraud the dates have to be accepted don't they? How can one answer that?

First, I'm not accusing anyone of fraud, but there is certainly something odd about how this all fits together that ought not to be taken at face value.

Microevolution does NOT take millions of years, as I say above. The few thousand years since the Flood is plenty of time for the variation of all those saved on the ark to have developed into the races and varieties and breeds we see today, especially given that they all had to have spread out to populate the earth from one single location, which would have involved series after series of populations splitting off from other populations and subsequently developing its own set of gene/allele frequencies.

On that same thread with the Pod Mrcaru lizards Percy posted information about breeds of Jutland cattle:

Our results further demonstrate the rapid diversification of the Jutland breed herds due to limited gene flow and genetic drift.

The only point I'm making is that rapid diversification is not rare and it's an example not only of rapid microevolution but of the VARIETY within species that is the reality those fossil arrangements of skulls and ear bones defy.

Also, if millions of years even occurred every living thing would long since have become extinct because evolution DOES "use up" genetic diversity and mutation isn't orderly enough or rapid enough to replace that diversity, especially if rapid microevolution due to changed gene frequencies with population isolation is as common as I think it is. You run out of genetic diversity and that is the end of evolution for any particular line of genetic microevolution. There is no evolution from one species to another, it is all within species.

=================
*

Malcolm writes:

Well for the most part it is an artificial arrangement, since our current understanding of human evolution indicates that many of the species which these skulls represent branched off from our line of descent from a common ancestor we shared with Chimps.

This I've addressed above, but Malcolm goes on:

The reasoning we have for this common ancestor is the genetic evidence that Humans and Chimps are related, from simplistic DNA hybridisation to full genome sequencing, endogenous retroviruses, pseudogenes etc. Now to some, including yourself, a direct comparison between Humans and Chimps would suggest too many differences for the two species to be related, or to put it another way, for them to be related would require some ‘macroevolutionary’ change.

No, I don't think this quite reflects my thinking, right now I'm absorbed with questions about the skulls which he goes on to:

The arrangement of hominin skulls illustrates the much smaller ‘microevolutionary’ changes that have occurred between populations leading up towards our own population. You did agree with this by stating that the skulls represented normal human variation, the only exception being skull A, the modern Chimp. However, when you look at skull B it has a lot more in common with skull A then it does with skull N.

True, and as I did say somewhere I'm not sure if B and C are human or not. But I have problems with the arrangement of those that are most clearly human anyway. I did say they represent normal human variations, but in saying that I meant that in living reality you wouldn't find them in the just-so arrangement that implies line of descent from one to another that Dr. A's chart presents. What you would find in reality is differences between individuals but probably most clearly differences between racial groups, at least in general. One group would generally have broad faces for instance, another long faces, one prominent large teeth, another small crooked teeth, one would have short noses, another long noses, one high set prominent cheekbones, another hardly any clear cheekbones at all. GENETIC REALITY SHOWS VARIATION, IT DOES NOT SHOW LINEAR DESCENT FROM ONE TYPE TO ANOTHER. Even in isolated populations where genetic inbreeding has developed a distinctive racial appearance what you find is variation between individuals, not some gradation from individual to another or parent to child to child etc. Since this is the case with living things, why should we expect such neat linearity in the fossils that are found all over the planet that are unlikely to have any close genetic relation between them? AGAIN, WHERE ARE THE DEVIANTS IN YOUR JUST-SO SEQUENCE

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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	Message 151 by dwise1, posted 09-20-2015 2:16 AM		dwise1 has replied

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Message 153 of 163 (769365)
09-20-2015 7:13 AM

Reply to: Message 147 by Faith
09-19-2015 8:41 PM

Re: ooops

Faith writes:

Thanks.

And thank you!

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

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RAZD

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Message 154 of 163 (769367)
09-20-2015 7:28 AM

Reply to: Message 152 by Faith
09-20-2015 6:18 AM

Let's try to keep the focus on Homo naledi

Let's ALL try to keep the focus on Homo naledi, and perhaps take the discussion of other fossils to the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread.

For instance

... How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host? ...

See Message 113 on the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread.

Enjoy

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RAZD

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Message 155 of 163 (769368)
09-20-2015 7:55 AM

Reply to: Message 152 by Faith
09-20-2015 6:18 AM

Head Games

The point, Faith, was that IF the information in the journals was all made up arbitrary evolutionist nonsense, then those students were studying arbitrary evolutionist nonsense.

No Faith, evolution does not make errors -- it is not a person.

The reason we find such a neat pattern is because it is the history of evolution as it occurred, a little change here, a little change there, and over time creating the path from early hominid to modern man.

This path has many side branches, cousins, like the Neanderthals.

But the main point is that IF you have an actual evolutionary lineage, THEN there will be intermediate stages from one point to another in the fossil record. Finding intermediates confirms this.

Homo naledi is the latest find in a field with increasing numbers of intermediates between a common ancestor with Chimpanzees and modern humans. It fits neatly into the sequence shown.

The similarities between (A) and (B,C) point to that common ancestor.

Here is one image of possible lineage from 1998 with skull images:

Fossil Skulls!

quote:
Below are 12 fossil skulls that represent more than 3.5 million years of human evolution. Click on any of them to find out more. This exhibit is enhanced with the Shockwave plug-in, which you can download for free from Macromedia.

American Museum of Natural History

Note that this is interactive on the referenced page so that you can pick a skull and get further information on it.

Another version of such a tree can be seen at

The human story: We’re still here!

quote:
In Fossils: The Key to the Past (2009), British palaeontologist Richard Fortey points out, Not many years ago, there were very few named species of Homo — now there are a whole clutch of them. The original idea of ‘links in a chain’ leading to modern humankind has been replaced by a view recognising a number of branches that did not give rise to any survivors, and a rather special lineage that led to the whole panoply of the human race in all its diversity of colour, language and creed: that is to say, Homo sapiens.

You can check these against the Talk Origins skulls picture that DrA posted:

29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1

You can also note that the new find, Homo naledi fits into these diagrams, as does a previous find by Lee Berger of Australopithicus sediba

quote:
Australopithecus sediba

The fossil skeletons of Au. sediba from Malapa cave are so complete that scientists can see what entire skeletons looked like near the time when Homo evolved. Details of the teeth, the length of the arms and legs, and the narrow upper chest resemble earlier Australopithecus, while other tooth traits and the broad lower chest resemble humans. These links indicate that Au. sediba may reveal information about the origins and ancestor of the genus Homo. Functional changes in the pelvis of Au. sediba point to the evolution of upright walking, while other parts of the skeleton retain features found in other australopithecines. ...

MH1

quote:
MH1 is a juvenile australopithecine, about 12-13 years old. It was the first specimen of Au. sediba found at Malapa Cave. Both cranial and postcranial remains have been recovered from this individual. The mixture of primitive and derived traits may help link the genus Australopithecus with the genus Homo.

Arranged by time the evolutionary trends appear.

Enjoy

Edited by RAZD, : added

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RAZD

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Message 156 of 163 (769372)
09-20-2015 9:08 AM

Reply to: Message 131 by RAZD
09-17-2015 12:12 PM

Re: Getting ahead? (pt 3)

So now we come to the reconstructed skull of Homo naledi:

quote:
Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa

The endocranial volume of all H. naledi specimens is clearly small compared to most known examples of Homo. We combined information from the most complete cranial vault specimens to arrive at an estimate of endocranial volume for both larger (presumably male) and smaller (presumably female) individuals (larger composite depicted in Figure 11). The resulting estimates of approximately 560cc and 465cc, respectively, overlap entirely with the range of endocranial volumes known for australopiths. Within the genus Homo, only the smallest specimens of H. habilis, one single H. erectus specimen, and H. floresiensis overlap with these values.

Figure 11. Virtual reconstruction of the endocranium of the larger composite cranium from DH1 and DH2 overlaid with the ectocranial surfaces.
(A) Lateral view. (B) Superior view. The resulting estimate of endocranial volume is 560cc. Scale bar = 10 cm.

Despite its small vault size, the cranium of H. naledi is structurally similar to those of early Homo. ...

Again there is a lot of detailed information that follows this, discussing the differences and similarities to other skulls.

Enjoy

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dwise1

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Message 157 of 163 (769380)
09-20-2015 1:10 PM

Reply to: Message 152 by Faith
09-20-2015 6:18 AM

Re: there's just something funny about the transitionals idea

The point of my Message 151 was two-fold:

I am in general agreement with Coyote regarding creationist dishonesty. In fact, I'm dealing with a local creationist, Bill Morgan, whom I can only describe as a pathological liar. However, there are some honest creationists, such as Merle Hertzler was and Dr. Kurt Wise was (and might still be). The problem for honest creationists is that, since they will seek the truth and research claims, they don't usually remain creationists for long. Sorry, but that's just the nature of the beast.
What Merle discovered is highly pertinent to this discussion: all that information is out there and is readily accessible by anyone who can enter a library.

And I would recommend to anyone wanting to respond to what Merle wrote that they please follow that link and read the entire page in order to get the full context.

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Omnivorous

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Message 158 of 163 (769446)
09-20-2015 10:20 PM

Reply to: Message 156 by RAZD
09-20-2015 9:08 AM

Re: Getting ahead? (pt 3)

As you know, RAZD, a major obstacle to understanding evolution is the profound difficulty of apprehending deep (geologic) time. We are such transient creatures, and at our native temporal scale it is difficult to understand the enormity of deep time. Of course, for a young earth creationist, that understanding is blocked completely.

Your posts in this thread put me in mind of a similar block to understanding the nature of science itself: you could call it deep thought, for the enormous number of work/years spent quantifying and analyzing a find of this caliber; the scale must enlarge to encompass the years required just to educate and train the scientists involved, and inflate again to accommodate the millennia of training and work/years by generations of previous scientists. It has been a Herculean labor.

The effort and rigor demanded by such a volume of data amaze me, especially when directed at better understanding our origins for the sake of understanding, a search for self-understanding that in other contexts would be thought spiritual. Yet this dig is just one bead on a long string of projects stretching back centuries.

It is the grandest of adventures, bridging time and space to see just what we are. The time scale is merely human, but the project is gloriously human. Communicating that to an inattentive public is an essential challenge. I remember when there was a popular sense of involvement with this intellectual adventure. I hope we can see that again; spreading the word about the amazing effort, and the accessibility of the knowledge, may help.

Thanks for doing the yeoman's work in hauling all that data here and contributing explications and connections. I find it inspiring, and I'll be studying it for some time--which is what I've done today between other posts.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
-Terence

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Message 159 of 163 (769570)
09-22-2015 1:14 PM

Reply to: Message 123 by RAZD
09-14-2015 12:39 PM

Re: Yes, that's the hand difference, now let's look at the foot?

It would appear that the naledi foot is also very similar to modern human, maybe even more similar than the hand.

'naledi' is remarkably similar to the Czech for 'on ice'. So we have a creature dubbed 'man on ice' with feet very similar to our own. Only one reasonable conclusion:

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RAZD

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Message 160 of 163 (769579)
09-22-2015 2:05 PM

Reply to: Message 159 by caffeine
09-22-2015 1:14 PM

Re: Yes, that's the hand difference, now let's look at the foot?

'naledi' is remarkably similar to the Czech for 'on ice'. So we have a creature dubbed 'man on ice' with feet very similar to our own. Only one reasonable conclusion:

My Canadian side likes that ... although that may be evidence of a more primitive human behavioral system, rather than a derived one ... maybe the small brain fits in there too ...

In my own reading I first read it as "nailed it" ... ie got it right the first time.

Enjoy

Edited by RAZD, : .

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RAZD

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Message 161 of 163 (769585)
09-22-2015 3:52 PM

Reply to: Message 126 by RAZD
09-14-2015 6:51 PM

Re: Another source of information from NCSE

Homo nalediAnother Awesome Twig on the Human Family Tree, Part 1

Here are the other two parts:

Homo nalediAnother Awesome Twig on the Human Family Tree, Part 2

With this sketch of the cave chamber:

and

Homo nalediAnother Awesome Twig on the Human Family Tree, Part 3

With this picture of the assembled skull:

Homo naledi assembled skull (Berger et al. 2015
http://elifesciences.org/lookup/doi/10.7554/eLife.09560.019.
Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

and this comment:

quote:
... if you can’t pinpoint the age of a fossil find it’s a big problem. Age gives context and you can’t draw firm evolutionary conclusions without context. Geologists infer that Rising Star cave where H. naledi was found is less than 3 million years old, so there seems to be a firm oldest possible date, but that doesn’t help a whole lot. Does H. naledi represent a root of the Homo genus? Or is it something younger, representing an as-of-yet unknown twig of the hominin tree? We don’t know. Paleoanthropologist William Jungers said it well: Without a date, these fossils are more curiosities than game-changersWhere they fit in the family tree will be influenced by their age[right now] they are a twig, looking for a trunk.

As mentioned before, it is the spacial\temporal matrix that is important to determining the evolutionary trends of fossils.

AND there is a link to some interview videos with Berger made during the dig. Lots of information there.

Enjoy

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Message 162 of 163 (769586)
09-22-2015 4:03 PM

Reply to: Message 156 by RAZD
09-20-2015 9:08 AM

Re: Getting ahead? (pt 3)

So we now have the modeled skull:

quote:

And the assembled head of Dinaledi Hominin 1 (DH1) from the NSCS part 3 article:

Homo naledi assembled skull (Berger et al. 2015
http://elifesciences.org/lookup/doi/10.7554/eLife.09560.019.
Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

and I would expect a more complete model of the complete skull using scaled elements from DH2 and DH3 could be produced, but I have not yet found a picture of this. I have seen glimpses of a model skull using DH1 but can't tell from it what else is included. ~~Has anyone else seen this?~~[abe] I found these from Huffington Post:

Looking at wikipedia there is also this picture showing something like a reconstruction of H. naledi:

I don't think these are to scale (no info on that) ...

All we need is a frontal and we can add it to the picture that Dr A has posted.

Enjoy

Edited by RAZD, : added wiki profiles

Edited by RAZD, : add skull

Edited by Admin, : Reduce image width.

Edited by Admin, : Rerender for mobile usability.

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	Message 163 by RAZD, posted 09-26-2015 5:40 PM		RAZD has not replied

RAZD

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Message 163 of 163 (769927)
09-26-2015 5:40 PM

Reply to: Message 162 by RAZD
09-22-2015 4:03 PM

Getting Dates for the Homo naledi is hard ...

and it's not just because they are socially backwards and a little mixed up ...

quote:
Homo naledi: determining the age of fossils is not an exact science

The skull of Homo naledi is built like those
of early Homo species but its brain was just
more than half the size of the average
ancestor from 2 million years ago.

Age is nothing but a number when it comes to unravelling the relationships of species from our past. We do not know the actual geological age of the Dinaledi fossils, the single largest fossil hominin find in Africa, but the discovery of Homo naledi still provides insight into how our ancestors evolved.

The bottom line is that, for now, we have little idea how old the fossils may be.

But how old is it?

Our lack of a geological age for the fossils caught some other experts by surprise. ...

Indeed, so-called relic species can be among the most important indicators of biological relationships, survivors that carry anatomical features from deep time. The coelacanth is much more than a curiosity: its anatomy provides vital clues that helped scientists understand how early land creatures could evolve from lobe-finned fish ancestors.

How our ancestors evolved

No matter its geological age, Homo naledi may provide vital clues about the way our ancestors stepped along a humanlike evolutionary path. This is where the real mystery comes in.

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