A KINK IN THE EVOLUTION STORY.....

[rooter]

Ardi, Humans and Primates Sign in to Recommend
October 7, 2009

Between present humans and our earliest prehuman ancestor, there is a direct genetic and evolutionary link, a clear map of descent that includes the earliest common ancestors we share with other primates. We just don’t know what it looks like yet. Whether paleontologists will ever be able to fill in all the details on that map depends on discoveries like one made by a team of scientists led by Tim D. White from the University of California, Berkeley — the fossils of a species called Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi for short.

According to a report in the journal Science, Ardi pushes the hominid story back to 4.4 million years ago and to a site in the Afar Rift region of Ethiopia. She (the most complete skeleton is probably female) also pushes the human story into a different ecosystem than Australopithecus, the grassland ancestor who lived, in various subspecies, as long as 3.7 million years ago. Ardi, who was discovered in 1992, lived in a “woodland with small patches of forest,” a discovery that downplays the importance of open grassland to human evolution.

Like Australopithecus, she walked upright without most of the characteristic postures of chimpanzees and gorillas. Her skull is smaller than Australopithecus, about the same size as that of a bonobo.

Paleontologists are not looking for a “missing link” between humans and present-day primates closest to us — gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. What they’re hoping to find is the earliest common ancestor from which the separate lines of development leading to humans and modern great apes emerged. Ardi is not that common ancestor. If anything, this find helps demonstrate how quickly early hominids moved down a separate path of evolution. It also suggests that living primates do not represent some primitive stage of a shared ancestry but are, as the scientists write, “highly specialized, but through very different evolutionary pathways.”

These are tremendously important discoveries, recasting the story of hominid evolution and making us eager for the next chapter.

[berto64]

I'll stick with the premise: "GOD made me".

[ampaterry]

It is remarkable how findings like these 11 papers just published in Science can virtually DESTROY all former ideas of how man evolved from lower animals -

YET the Naturalists insist that we did, indeed, evolve from an animal that evolved from goo that evolved from rocks.

And they defend the teaching of the same to our children in the public school system using money extracted from us, even when that teaching is in direct opposition to the majority desire of our citizens.

Just like Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, and a plethora of other errors and hoaxes, the 'evidence' of LAST year will go into the dustbin of history while they make up a whole NEW scenario to explain the presence of Man without the need for God.

I have worked in Science my entire life, and these idiots almost make me ashamed of that fact, when they continue with pseudo-scientific BS like this.

[Big ugly]

I believe there are several forms of evolution and even a form of human de-evolution. I believe you can see it in the large primates and the diffrent races of human beings.I don wnat ot offend anyone though so I wont go into any detail on open formums though.

[ampaterry]

I agree completely, big ugly!

The problem is with the term "evolution".
Evolution simply means 'change over time'.
As such, it is an absolutely undeniable fact, observed and used by every animal breeder and farmer that ever tried to improve his stock/crops.

But in the context of this article, they are speaking NOT of basic 'evolution' but of another theory called 'common descent', which is the belief that life on earth, living or extinct, evolved from an original single celled organism through the MECHANISM of 'evolution'.

'evolution' as change over time is a fact, while 'evolution' as common descent is mere speculation based upon an atheistic paradigm. And those that believe in common descent LOVE to interchange the terms without notice, so they can talk about all life evolving from a single celled organism, then say evolution is a proven fact, and people think common descent is a fact.

Do people evolve? Absolutely! All the races have evolved to fit the environment they lived in the longest. What are the results of mutations in the human genome? Hemophilia, spinal bifida, sicle cell anemia, sub-standard vision and a host of other congenital defects. Mutations are virtually ALWAYS detrimental, in spite of the hopes of the Naturalists.

[rooter]

I was very impressed when I read the remarks on the subject....My wife who, is very religious, and I, not even so, would comment on the matter totally different...I am convinced life did not just happen...the complexities of it all is even more exergerated when something is brought forth for our consideration...I guess in this case, it is entertainment. Sunday evening, tomorrow, on the DISCOVERY channel, this story of ARDI will be presented...Don't know about you, but when I think about heavenly bodies millions of light years distant, my head rebels and actually hurts.... recently the term trillions have entered into our lives when spending and taxes are mentioned....that makes my ass hurt!!! Chief

[ampaterry]

IF the fed actually SPENDS all that money they plan to, everyone in the country is going to be feeling that pain in the nether regions, Chief -

[muddober]

I am the furthest thing in world from being a bible thumper and my shadow never darkens the door of any church, but I do read fairly well and if one very carefully reads the first 26 verses of Genesis, thinks about it a bit, and then watches the Discovery or History channel on the subject of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, the first 26 verses of Genesis makes a lot of sense.

The way I read it, is that man as we know him just kind of showed up if you will, which in my view comports with the fact that modern science can't quite make the grade on linking man to anything. I would be more than happy to expand on my view should anyone ask, but I have no real interest in debating it.



Ron

[ampaterry]

Absolutely!

Evolution is undeniable -
We have dairy cattle that outproduce ANY of 50 years ago.
We have race horses that CONSTANTLY set new records for speed.
But change has limits -
No matter how many millions of years we selectively breed them, we will NEVER get a cow that produces a ton of milk a day.
No matter how much work we put into our breeding program, we will never get a race horse to break Mach 1.

And that is the fallacy of the theory of Common Descent. Sure, you can have a wolf type of animal that, over many generations, could have produced all varieties of wolves, dogs, fox, coyote, dingo, etc. You could have a hoofed beast that, over many generations, produced the Shetland pony and the Percheron, the Zebra and the Ass. But you can NEVER get a dog and a tree from the same ancestor, as the genetic information is simply not there.

[tntrucker]

I am a Bible believer, but I'll leave that for a different place, as others here aren't. Thing I would point out. These guys find some bones. All of a sudden they can tell you all about things 3.7 to 4.4 million- years ago. When I was a teenager the scientists were telling us we were going to have nuclear winter -another ice age. Now we are all going to burn up because of global warming, while we are having some of the earliest snow ever. We were also supposed to be using flying cars by now according to sciene of my youth. They don't know what happened that far back.

[45nut]

I will tiptoe in and try to not to upset the apple cart.

Portions of Darwin's works are correct. Like "Specialization in Species" I once saw a female Grackle walking down a row of tractor trailers at a warehouse. She was looking up at the trucks, then moving to the next one. I wondered what she was doing. She was looking in the grill of the trucks for bugs. When she was one, she would fly up and get and eat it. I know that was learned behavior. A bird adapting to its changing environment is a far cry from teaching as fact that this same bird "evolving" from a blob of goo along with dogs, cats, horses and alligators.

Is not a scientific law defined as something that can be repeated in a lab? Wait, the definition from dictionary.com is: a phenomenon of nature that has been proven to invariably occur whenever certain conditions exist or are met; also, a formal statement about such a phenomenon; also called natural law

I didn't descend from apes and I don't think BU did either. In my youth they taught us that first there was the little bitty horse, then one a hundred thousand years later a little bigger, and another one bigger in another million years one bigger yet until we had the horse we know and one bigger than that Yet, evolution proponents fail to explain why all of these horse's bones were found in the same layer in a dig in France when the tiny horse was supposed to be extinct millions of years before the big one finally came around. Answer? Simple. God created the world and all the animals and us. Species have become extinct and adapted to a changing environment in all of recorded history, but not one new species has evolved out of another. I wonder why that is?

The main reason it's still a theory is there is not one transitional specimen, zero, zilch, nadda in the entire fossil record. Not one out of the millions and millions of fossils on record are a true transitional fossil. They are all fully developed in their natural state. Plus all the hoaxes that paleontologists have pulled over the years tells you the fossil record does not back up their "facts".

[jim summers]

Don't know about you fellas but i did not come from any primate no matter what the scientific community says or what so called proof they produce.

Call me closed minded that's ok i can deal with it.

[red14]

Originally Posted by jim summers

Don't know about you fellas but i did not come from any primate no matter what the scientific community says or what so called proof they produce.

Call me closed minded that's ok i can deal with it.

I agree.

Many good points here. My son is a scientist and we go round and round. An educated mind is a powerful thing. Prove and believe are so far apart, never the twain shall meet.