09.22
The latest “astounding” evolutionary fossil find is the skeleton of a “3 year old female” version of Australopithecus Afarensis. As usual, the media is throwing everything at the wall and seeing what will stick. I get suspicious though whenever a claim is made about finding an “almost complete” skeleton, yet the only pictures you see in the article are of the skull. Turns out that the actual find, while very neat, was a lot less impressive than stated. Most of it is still encased in sandstone. Here is what was actually found:
“The fossil find includes the complete skull, including an impression of the brain and the lower jaw, all the vertebrae from the neck to just below the torso, all the ribs, both shoulder blades and both collarbones, the right elbow and part of a hand, both knees and much of both shin and thigh bones.”
The debate over “Lucy” has always been about whether or not it was just a mottled together ape skeleton, or some type of early hominid. This new find so far does almost nothing to change that debate. From the waist down, only a few fragments were found, so you can’t really say what they indicate. The upper body, on the other hand, strongly indicates ape-ness:
“The shoulder blades resemble those of a gorilla rather than a modern human. The neck seems short and thick like a great ape’s, rather than the more slender version humans have to keep the head stable while running. The organ of balance in the inner ear is more ape-like than human. The fingers are very curved, which could indicate climbing ability, “but I’m cautious about that,” Spoor said. Curved fingers have been noted for afarensis before, but their significance is in dispute.
A big question is what the foot bones will show when their sandstone casing is removed, he said. Will there be a grasping big toe like the opposable thumb of a human hand? Such a chimp-like feature would argue for climbing ability, he said.
Yet, to resolve the debate, scientists may have to find a way to inspect vanishingly small details of such old bones, to get clues to how those bones were used in life, he said.”
This line blows me away though:
Creationists have held for years that the fossil record clearly indicates a world-wide cataclysmic flood event. Call it Noah’s flood if you like. Every ancient culture has a world-wide flood myth, not just Christians and Jews, but for some reason nobody believes there was a world-wide flood. Many dinosaur sites around the world show signs of rapid flood burial. We have sedimentary fossils of fish schools 1000’s of feet up in the Sierra mountains, yet there was no flood?
More good stuff about this find can be found here.
