Well, this won’t help: Baboon bone in iconic “Lucy” skeleton?

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 11, 2015

Human evolution, Intelligent Design, News}

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Once the fragments had been pieced together, the skeleton was declared to be of the species Australopithecus afarensis. But the skeleton became known as Lucy, inspired by a Beatles song that blasted out of a cassette player as the researchers celebrated their discovery that evening.

Forty years later, thanks to its age and completeness, Lucy remains an important specimen. It shows, for instance, that our distant ancestors began to walk upright on two legs long before they developed big brains.

It’s no surprise, then, that replicas of the skeleton are on display at museums across the world. But when Gary Sawyer and Mike Smith at the American Museum of Natural History in New York recently began work on a new reconstruction of Lucy’s skeleton, with help from Scott Williams at New York University, they noticed something odd. More.

For sure.

See also: What we do and don’t know about human evolution

Comments

Piotr, They look different for the reasons provided. In one graph A is closely related to B and in another they are not as closely related. It's as if they branched decidedly in different directions.
(A(B(C(D E))))
That is wrong as A is not a superset of B, which is not a superset of C, which is not a superset of D and EJoe_{April 16, 2015
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Joe, his examples are wrong. A tree with rotated nodes only looks different, but it's the same graph with the same properties. (A(B(C(D E)))) is exactly the same structure as ((B((E D)C))A). Or, if you prefer real taxa,(gibbon (orangutan (gorilla (human chimp)))) = ((orangutan ((chimp human) gorilla)) gibbon). The taxa cluster in the same way.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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Piotr, He showed how rotations change the topology. He gave examples. What is wrong with you?Joe_{April 16, 2015
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wd400, whatever. Lucy was just an ape. If you disagree I will be happy to show you to be wrong (once again). Elsewise you can just go back to ignoring me as you usually do. I don't care either way. I gave up on you ever being reasonable a few years ago.bornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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wd400, It's a natural defensive mechanism, like a sea-cucumber expelling its entrails.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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OK then BA. I have to say, I find this (defensive?) urge to throw up tonnes of (semi-related) links every time a creationist is shown to wrong very strange. But I guess there's not much chance of stopping it, so each to their own.wd400_{April 16, 2015
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Joe, Take this, for example:
These cladograms preserve the hierarchical structure of Figure 1, but they fail notably to keep intermediate taxa where they once belonged. Rotations preserve some of the structure of the original, but not all of it. Similarity in structure may well be an assumption governing the identity of various cladograms; but as these examples show, structural similarity along one dimension does not preserve structural similarity along another.
Well, rotations do absolutely nothing -- nothing at all -- zilch -- nada to the topology of the cladogram. If you rotate one node, 30%, or all of them, you still have the same clades arranged into the same tree structure. This is, I can imagine, one of the first things students have to realise: rotations don't produce different structures, and if there are some conventional ways of drawing cladograms, those conventions are completely arbitrary. You can rotate any node at will; it doesn't matter. I won't even try to divine what Berlinski means by "intermediate taxa" (or by "dimensions") in this context, but whatever he means, rotation affects no relations between taxa, so it can't have the effect he attributes to it. As a mathematician of sorts, he should know something about graphs and isomorphies. Being witty and wrong at the same time is a dangerous mixture. Wit may recoil in your face.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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Hey sock puppet, anyone who thinks tat humans are related to other primates- evolutionary speaking- is an embarrassment. I bet if you try to make a case against Berlinski I could easily dismantle it. Care to try?Joe_{April 16, 2015
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Piotr, your personal subjective opinion does not establish cladistics, (drawing subjective imaginary lines of relationship on paper), as a valid science. Your unwavering belief that drawing subjective imaginary lines of relationship on paper is a valid, 'scientific', way to establish common ancestry as true may be one huge hint as to why you were banned. The belief is not only unscientific but is delusional in its nature.bornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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#19 Joe, Some sockpuppet? I'm not making an effort to conceal my identity, but in case you haven't worked it out, this is Piotr speaking. I wouldn't have to use an alternative alias if Barry hadn't been so quick to block my regular account. I'll write as Don Pedro till Barry decides to lift his ban. As for Berlinski's essay, "embarrassing" is a charitable description. Even you should be able to see why if you read it with care.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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wd400, I did not claim otherwise. I merely showed that lucy, regardless of the bone in question, was just another ape. Lucy Makeover Shouts a Dangerously Deceptive Message About Our Supposed Ancestors by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on October 5, 2013 Excerpt: Australopithecus afarensis is extinct. Its bones suggest it was not identical to living apes, but it did have much in common with them. Many have assessed the skeletal pieces of the various afarensis and possible afarensis fossils that have been found. Overall, these skeletal parts reveal an animal well-adapted to arboreal life. Its wrist bones also suggest it was a knuckle-walker. Reconstructions of its pelvis demonstrate its so-called “bipedal” gait was nothing like a human being’s upright gait. In fact, it is only the evolutionary wish to impute a bipedal gait to this animal that marches its fossils upright across the pages of the evolutionary story. https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/lucy/lucy-makeover-shouts-a-dangerously-deceptive-message-about-our-supposed-ancestors/ Lucy - The Powersaw Incident - a humorous video showing how biased evolutionists can be with the evidence - 32:08 mark of video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI4ADhPVpA0&feature=player_detailpage#t=1928 Other 'Lucy' fossils have been found since the 'powersaw incident' that show that Lucy could not have possibly walked upright. A Look at Lucy’s Legacy by Dr. David Menton and Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on June 6, 2012 Excerpt: Other analyses taking advantage of modern technology, such as those by Christine Berge published in 199425 and 201026 in the Journal of Human Evolution, offer a different reconstruction allowing for a unique sort of locomotion. Berge writes, “The results clearly indicate that australopithecine bipedalism differs from that of humans. (1) The extended lower limb of australopithecines would have lacked stabilization during walking;,,, Lucy’s bones show the features used to lock the wrist for secure knuckle-walking seen in modern knuckle-walkers. https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/lucy/a-look-at-lucys-legacy/ Lucy, the Knuckle-walking abomination? by Dr. David Menton and Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on October 24, 2012 Excerpt: We would submit that the anterior migration of the afarensis foramen magnum occurred not deep in the evolutionary history of humanity but quite possibly sometime after 1992 in the laboratory. https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/lucy/lucy-the-knuckle-walking-abomination/ Here is an anatomically correct reconstruction of Lucy Lucy - a correct reconstruction - picture https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/campaigns/lucy-exhibit.jpgbornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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BA, Obviously I didn't ready any of the spam. But I find this this squid-like (l)-inkcloud interesting: can you just admit the "knee" refereed to above is not in fact claimed to be part of the individual "Lucy"?wd400_{April 16, 2015
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Just because someone can classify humans with other primates does not mean humans are related, evolutionary speaking, to those other primates. The only mutual relationships are of a common design nature. And some sock puppet saying that Berlinski wrote an embarrassing piece doesn't make it so. In typical cowardly evo-style it failed to make a case.Joe_{April 16, 2015
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Another place where 'orders of magnitude' differences are found between humans, chimps, (and all other animals), is in the 'image of God' that is uniquely inherent to man.
Evolution of the Genus Homo – Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences – Ian Tattersall, Jeffrey H. Schwartz, May 2009 Excerpt: “Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202 Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language - December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, "The mystery of language evolution," Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) It's difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/leading_evoluti092141.html
More interesting still, the three Rs, reading, writing, and arithmetic, i.e. the unique ability to process information inherent to man, are the very first things to be taught to children when they enter elementary school. And yet it is this information processing, i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is found to be foundational to life itself:
Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer - video clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVkdQhNdzHU
As well, as if that was not 'spooky' enough, information, not material, is found to be foundational to the universe itself:
"it from bit” Every “it”— every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has a bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances, an immaterial source and explanation, that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment—evoked responses, in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe." – Princeton University physicist John Wheeler (1911–2008) (Wheeler, John A. (1990), “Information, physics, quantum: The search for links”, in W. Zurek, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley)) Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." Anton Zeilinger - a leading expert in quantum teleportation: http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf Quantum physics just got less complicated - Dec. 19, 2014 Excerpt: Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner,,, found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one.,,, "The connection between uncertainty and wave-particle duality comes out very naturally when you consider them as questions about what information you can gain about a system. Our result highlights the power of thinking about physics from the perspective of information,",,, http://phys.org/news/2014-12-quantum-physics-complicated.html
Thus in conclusion Don, your evidence for genetic and anatomical similarity to infer common ancestry falls apart upon scrutiny, whereas my evidence for a unique 'information similarity' for man to infer that we are made in 'the image of God' remains robust! Go figure! Verses and Music:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the Light of men. Casting Crowns - The Word Is Alive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9itgOBAxSc
bornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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Don Pedro, well it doesn't surprise me one bit that Darwinists, via the ever flexible art of cladistic analysis, would now try to group humans as close to chimps and apes as possible. As mentioned in my previous post, per Berlinski and Meyer, cladistics, by presupposing the conclusion of common ancestry into its premises, is shamelessly abused by Darwinists to infer relationships between groups that never existed. Thus, since cladistics is so unreliable, what actual empirical evidence do you have that chimps and humans are related via common descent? Behe, Axe, Gauger, and others, have noted that the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection is grossly inadequate to account for even very minor changes in the proteins, and protein-protein binding sites, of a species in time frames that greatly exceed the supposed 6 mya divergence of chimps and humans (and even for time frames that greatly exceed that age of the earth and universe). Thus, since you have no real time empirical evidence that it is possible to change one species into another species, I would think that you would try to use genetic and anatomical similarity/dissimilarity to try to make your case that humans are 'just another genus of ape'? There is a small problem with this method. The similarity/dissimilarity between chimps and humans (and other creatures) is not as neat and clean as you would presuppose beforehand if common descent were true. For instance, anatomically we were found to be closer to pigs than to chimps.
A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans? - July 3, 2013 Excerpt: Dr. Eugene McCarthy,, has amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that human origins can be best explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence and McCarthy does not disappoint. Rather than relying on genetic sequence comparisons, he instead offers extensive anatomical comparisons, each of which may be individually assailable, but startling when taken together.,,, The list of anatomical specializations we may have gained from porcine philandering is too long to detail here. Suffice it to say, similarities in the face, skin and organ microstructure alone is hard to explain away. A short list of differential features, for example, would include, multipyramidal kidney structure, presence of dermal melanocytes, melanoma, absence of a primate baculum (penis bone), surface lipid and carbohydrate composition of cell membranes, vocal cord structure, laryngeal sacs, diverticuli of the fetal stomach, intestinal "valves of Kerkring," heart chamber symmetry, skin and cranial vasculature and method of cooling, and tooth structure. Other features occasionally seen in humans, like bicornuate uteruses and supernumerary nipples, would also be difficult to incorporate into a purely primate tree. http://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html
Now to be sure, the Darwinist who put forward the idea that a pig/chimp hybrid produced humans was roundly condemned by other Darwinists. But the funny thing in all that condemnation from other Darwinists is that none of the other Darwinists who condemned his 'heretical' idea were able to refute his 'pimp hybrid' hypothesis with any real empirical evidence to the contrary:
Human hybrids: a closer look at the theory and evidence - July 25, 2013 Excerpt: There was considerable fallout, both positive and negative, from our first story covering the radical pig-chimp hybrid theory put forth by Dr. Eugene McCarthy,,,By and large, those coming out against the theory had surprisingly little science to offer in their sometimes personal attacks against McCarthy. ,,,Under the alternative hypothesis (humans are not pig-chimp hybrids), the assumption is that humans and chimpanzees are equally distant from pigs. You would therefore expect chimp traits not seen in humans to be present in pigs at about the same rate as are human traits not found in chimps. However, when he searched the literature for traits that distinguish humans and chimps, and compiled a lengthy list of such traits, he found that it was always humans who were similar to pigs with respect to these traits. This finding is inconsistent with the possibility that humans are not pig-chimp hybrids, that is, it rejects that hypothesis.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-human-hybrids-closer-theory-evidence.html
So Don, do you now think pigs ought to be grouped with chimps as our next of kin on your imaginary cladograms? Of related note: I find it to be an especially interesting anatomical feature that, sexually, we are completely different than chimps. Man’s sexual reproduction relies on ‘hydraulics’ whereas chimpanzees have an actual bone involved in their reproductive system:
Ian Juby’s Chimp compared to Man sexual reproduction video – (plus Can sexual reproduction plausibly evolve in the first place?) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1VWQEnnwM
I certainly would like to hear the step by step evolutionary just so story for how that change was naturally selected for so as to have a good laugh! Moreover Don, besides the radical anatomical differences between Chimps and humans, (and also as mentioned in my previous post), the genetic similarity between chimps and humans is not nearly as great (98%) as Darwinists have misled people to believe. As I already referenced, Tomkins found 70% similarity for the protein coding regions (regions which only account for about 2% of the entire genome by the way). Moreover, unexpected genetic similarity is also found in other radically different species, such as dolphins and kangaroos:
Richard Sternberg PhD – podcast – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2. (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) 5:30 minute mark quote: “Basically the dolphin genome is almost wholly identical to the human genome,, yet no one would argue that bottle-nose dolphins are our sister species”,,, http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/ Kangaroo genes close to humans Excerpt: Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, "There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order," ,,,"We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome," http://www.reuters.com/article/science%20News/idUSTRE4AH1P020081118
So Don do you think that kangaroos and dolphins should be group as our sister species on your imaginary cladograms? Or related interest to the genetic similarity argument of Darwinists is the fact that the regulatory regions of the genome between chimps and humans are being found to be 'orders of magnitude' different:
"Where (chimps and humans) really differ, and they differ by orders of magnitude, is in the genomic architecture outside the protein coding regions. They are vastly, vastly, different.,, The structural, the organization, the regulatory sequences, the hierarchy for how things are organized and used are vastly different between a chimpanzee and a human being in their genomes." Raymond Bohlin (per Richard Sternberg) - 9:29 minute mark of video https://vimeo.com/106012299 An Interview with Stephen C. Meyer TT: Is the idea of an original human couple (Adam and Eve) in conflict with science? Does DNA tell us anything about the existence of Adam and Eve? SM: Readers have probably heard that the 98 percent similarity of human DNA to chimp DNA establishes that humans and chimps had a common ancestor. Recent studies show that number dropping significantly. More important, it turns out that previous measures of human and chimp genetic similarity were based upon an analysis of only 2 to 3 percent of the genome, the small portion that codes for proteins. This limited comparison was justified based upon the assumption that the rest of the genome was non-functional “junk.” Since the publication of the results of something called the “Encode Project,” however, it has become clear that the noncoding regions of the genome perform many important functions and that, overall, the non-coding regions of the genome function much like an operating system in a computer by regulating the timing and expression of the information stored in the “data files” or coding regions of the genome. Significantly, it has become increasingly clear that the non-coding regions, the crucial operating systems in effect, of the chimp and human genomes are species specific. That is, they are strikingly different in the two species. Yet, if alleged genetic similarity suggests common ancestry, then, by the same logic, this new evidence of significant genetic disparity suggests independent separate origins. For this reason, I see nothing from a genetic point of view that challenges the idea that humans originated independently from primates, http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/scripture-and-science-in-conflict/
Yet mutations to the developmental gene regulatory networks are found to be 'always catastrophically bad':
A Listener's Guide to the Meyer-Marshall Debate: Focus on the Origin of Information Question -Casey Luskin - December 4, 2013 Excerpt: "There is always an observable consequence if a dGRN (developmental gene regulatory network) subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed the embryos of each species develop in only one way." - Eric Davidson http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/a_listeners_gui079811.html
Thus, where Darwinists most need plasticity in the genome to be viable as a theory, (i.e. developmental Gene Regulatory Networks), is the place where mutations are found to be 'always catastrophically bad'. Yet, it is exactly in this area of the genome (i.e. regulatory networks) where substantial, ‘orders of magnitude’, differences are found between even supposedly closely related species. Needless to say, this is the exact opposite finding for what Darwinism would have predicted for what should have been found in the genome.bornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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A One-Man Clade – David Berlinski – July 18, 2013
By the way, that piece by Berlinski is one of the most embarrassingly ignorant things he's ever written (and that's saying a lot) -- especially the part about the alleged consequences of node rotation in a cladogram. Saying that such stuff represents "typical Berlinski wit and style" comes close to insulting him.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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Bornagain77, quoting King & Wilson (1975):
Because of these major differences in anatomy and way of life, biologists place the two species not just in separate genera but in separate families.
No longer true. That was 40 years ago, when the mutual relationships of chimpanzees, humans, gorillas and orangutans were not quite clear. Today the taxon Pongidae (found to be paraphyletic) is obsolete, and we have one family Hominidae with four extant genera and seven extant species. The closest living relative of chimpanzees and bonobos is Homo sapiens. Gorillas and orangutans are their more distant cousins.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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BA77,
wd400, as to: “This is one if those creationist factoids that resists correction.”
You have to wonder why they keep repeating it in the teeth of correction, don't you? A couple years ago I saw Russ Miller (essentially a poor man's Kent Hovind) cite this bogus "fact" in a lecture. Needless to say, his audience eagerly lapped it up.daveS_{April 16, 2015
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as to: "No contradiction here. Homo is also another genus of ape." Actually, humans and apes are not just in separate genera but also in separate families:
In “Science,” 1975, M-C King and A.C. Wilson were the first to publish a paper estimating the degree of similarity between the human and the chimpanzee genome. This documented the degree of genetic similarity between the two! The study, using a limited data set, found that we were far more similar than was thought possible at the time. Hence, we must be one with apes mustn't we? But…in the second section of their paper King and Wilson honestly describe the deficiencies of such reasoning: “The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than sibling species in anatomy and way of life. Although humans and chimpanzees are rather similar in the structure of the thorax and arms, they differ substantially not only in brain size but also in the anatomy of the pelvis, foot, and jaws, as well as in relative lengths of limbs and digits (38). Humans and chimpanzees also differ significantly in many other anatomical respects, to the extent that nearly every bone in the body of a chimpanzee is readily distinguishable in shape or size from its human counterpart (38). Associated with these anatomical differences there are, of course, major differences in posture (see cover picture), mode of locomotion, methods of procuring food, and means of communication. Because of these major differences in anatomy and way of life, biologists place the two species not just in separate genera but in separate families (39). So it appears that molecular and organismal methods of evaluating the chimpanzee human difference yield quite different conclusions (40).” King and Wilson went on to suggest that the morphological and behavioral between humans and apes,, must be due to variations in their genomic regulatory systems. David Berlinski - The Devil's Delusion - Page 162&163 Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees Mary-Claire King; A. C. Wilson - 1975
Of Note: In biology, a genus (plural: genera) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. Also of note: The supposed 99% similarity between chimps and humans, that King and Wilson originally came up with, has now been found to be a fallacious number:
The Myth of 98% Genetic Similarity and Chromosome Fusion between Humans and Chimps - Jeffrey Tomkins PhD. - video https://vimeo.com/95287522 Comprehensive Analysis of Chimpanzee and Human Chromosomes Reveals Average DNA Similarity of 70% - by Jeffrey P. Tomkins - February 20, 2013 Excerpt: For the chimp autosomes, the amount of optimally aligned DNA sequence provided similarities between 66 and 76%, depending on the chromosome. In general, the smaller and more gene-dense the chromosomes, the higher the DNA similarity—although there were several notable exceptions defying this trend. Only 69% of the chimpanzee X chromosome was similar to human and only 43% of the Y chromosome. Genome-wide, only 70% of the chimpanzee DNA was similar to human under the most optimal sequence-slice conditions. While, chimpanzees and humans share many localized protein-coding regions of high similarity, the overall extreme discontinuity between the two genomes defies evolutionary timescales and dogmatic presuppositions about a common ancestor. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v6/n1/human-chimp-chromosome
Also of note, Cladistics, by presupposing the conclusion of common ancestry into its premises, is shamelessly abused by Darwinists to infer relationships between groups that never existed:
“In biology, cladistics (originally called phylogenetic systematics) is a taxonomical technique for arranging organisms according to how they branch in the evolutionary tree of life.” per Rational Wiki
Nick Matzke tried to use Cladistics, (i.e. imaginary lines drawn on paper inferring relationships that never existed), to refute Stephen Meyer's book 'Darwin's Doubt'. David Berlinski, in typical Berlinski wit and style, solidly refuted Matzke's supposed solid refutation.
A One-Man Clade – David Berlinski – July 18, 2013 Excerpt: The relationship between cladistics and Darwin's theory of evolution is thus one of independent origin but convergent confusion. "Phylogenetic systematics," the entomologist Michael Schmitt remarks, "relies on the theory of evolution." To the extent that the theory of evolution relies on phylogenetic systematics, the disciplines resemble two biologists dropped from a great height and clutching at one another in mid-air. Tight fit, major fail.7 No wonder that Schmidt is eager to affirm that "phylogenetics does not claim to prove or explain evolution whatsoever."8 If this is so, a skeptic might be excused for asking what it does prove or might explain? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade074601.html
Stephen Meyer also addressed Matzke's misuse of cladistics to try to refute Darwin's Doubt, and to try to support Darwinism, and clearly shows, for the lay person, why cladistics fails to upset the argument for ID:
Cladistics Made Easy: Why an Arcane Field of Study Fails to Upset Steve Meyer's Argument for Intelligent Design Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics: Matzke Part 1 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2B76JbMQ4 Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics: Matzke Part 2 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZWw18b3nHo Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics: Matzke Part 3 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77XappzJh1k
bornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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As opposed to one if those Darwinian factoids that resists correction? Such as say the claim that Lucy was a transitional species on her way to becoming man instead of just being another ape?
No contradiction here. Homo is also another genus of ape.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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wd400, as to: "This is one if those creationist factoids that resists correction." As opposed to one if those Darwinian factoids that resists correction? Such as say the claim that Lucy was a transitional species on her way to becoming man instead of just being another ape?
“these australopith specimens (Lucy) can be accommodated with the range of intraspecific variation of African apes” Nature 443 (9/2006), p.296 “The australopithecines (Lucy) known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage.” Charles Oxnard, former professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis; “The australopithecine (Lucy) skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian (ape-like) as opposed to human that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white.” Lord Solly Zuckerman – Chief scientific advisor to British government and leading zoologist etc.. etc..
Or perhaps like another false neo-Darwinian factoid that resists correction? The false neo-Darwinian claim that mutations to DNA, (i.e. the central dogma of the modern synthesis), can produce new body plans?
Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins and Information for Body Plans - video https://vimeo.com/91322260 Dr. Stephen Meyer comments at the end of the preceding video,,, ‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ Stephen Meyer - (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate - 2009) Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: A technique called "saturation mutagenesis"1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12 None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans--because none of the observed developmental mutations benefit the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html
bornagain77_{April 16, 2015
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Indeed, the knee can't belong to the same individual by any stretch of the imagination. Lucy's complete left femur and proximal right tibia are preserved, so unless she had at least three legs, AL 129-1 and AL 288-1 must be two different fossil specimens, as the different reference numbers have always indicated. Any lay person can guess that much from just looking at the bones: http://www.efossils.org/page/specimens/Australopithecus%20afarensis People who, like Querius, learn palaeontology from creationist websites, do so at their peril.Don Pedro_{April 16, 2015
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This is one if those creationist factoids that resists correction. No one ever claimed the 'knee' found near to, and a year before, Lucy (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AL_129-1) belonged to Lucy, just the same species.wd400_{April 15, 2015
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Silver Asiatic,
It only took 41 years for them to find this. Not bad.
Lol. Which only goes to show how little critical attention Lucy has received--or how intimidated scientists have become. Have you seen this? http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0714_Lucy_fails_test.html I especially liked this part:
After the lecture he (Dr. Johanson) opened the meeting for questions. The audience of approximately 800 was quiet so some creationists asked questions. Roy Holt asked; “How far away from Lucy did you find the knee?” (The knee bones were actually discovered about a year earlier than the rest of Lucy). Dr. Johanson answered (reluctantly) about 200 feet lower (!) and two to three kilometers away (about 1.5 miles!). Continuing, Holt asked, “Then why are you sure it belonged to Lucy?” Dr. Johanson: “Anatomical similarity.”
Wow. -QQuerius_{April 15, 2015
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So, one bone out of 89 was misidentified and you are inferring from this that Lucy is either are fraud or the result of incompetence. Is that how ID works? Attack small errors in science, any science, and conclude that this confirms ID? I am certainly glad that you are not responsible for education curriculum.lack of Focus_{April 13, 2015
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Great story. It only took 41 years for them to find this. Not bad. Of course, a little mistake does not undermine our trust in evolutionary claims.
"Mike pointed out that one of the [vertebra] fragments, which no one, including me, had really paid close attention to,
Nobody pays much attention to the specimen. As long as it can be claimed as support for Darwin, that's good enough. Plus, that was probably the only bone that "nobody paid close attention to". They really studied all the other ones. And they only had 41 years to find the mistake. Come on - cut them some slack.
If the fragment really does prove to belong to a baboon, he says, "we can cut Don Johanson and his colleagues some slack".
Evolution is just about as important as engineering an aircraft. No, it's more important than that. So, you left a panel off the fuselage. A few software errors in the navigation system. Cut them some slack. The engineers didn't pay attention. Evolutionists have too many important things to do to worry about things like this. I mean, the entire human race is depending on them. Baboon, human, porcupine ... so what? Evolution happened. Humans are slightly evolved ape-like hominids.Silver Asiatic_{April 13, 2015
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Seversky, it appears, from your statement, that you still believe that Lucy was an ancestor of humans. If so, you are wrong in that belief: The following shows, unequivocally, that 'Lucy', the supposed superstar of human evolution, was an ape:
"these australopith specimens (Lucy) can be accommodated with the range of intraspecific variation of African apes" Nature 443 (9/2006), p.296 "The australopithecines (Lucy) known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage." Charles Oxnard, former professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis; "The australopithecine (Lucy) skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian (ape-like) as opposed to human that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white." Lord Solly Zuckerman - Chief scientific advisor to British government and leading zoologist Lucy, the Knuckle-walking abomination? by Dr. David Menton and Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on October 24, 2012 Excerpt: We would submit that the anterior migration of the afarensis foramen magnum occurred not deep in the evolutionary history of humanity but quite possibly sometime after 1992 in the laboratory. https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/lucy/lucy-the-knuckle-walking-abomination/ My Pilgrimage to Lucy’s Holy Relics Fails to Inspire Faith in Darwinism Excerpt: ---"We were sent a cast of the Lucy skeleton, and I was asked to assemble it for display,” remembers Peter Schmid, a paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute in Zurich.,,, "When I started to put [Lucy’s] skeleton together, I expected it to look human,” Schmid continues “Everyone had talked about Lucy as being very modern, very human, so I was surprised by what I saw.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/my_pilgrimage_to_lucys_holy_re.html Israeli Researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans"; Apr 16, 2007 The Mandibular ramus morphology (lower jaw bone) on a recently discovered specimen of Australopithecus afarensis closely matches that of gorillas. This finding was unexpected given that chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans.,,,its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2007/04/24/lucy_demoted_from_the_human_ancestral_li Lucy Makeover Shouts a Dangerously Deceptive Message About Our Supposed Ancestors by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on October 5, 2013 Excerpt: Australopithecus afarensis is extinct. Its bones suggest it was not identical to living apes, but it did have much in common with them. Many have assessed the skeletal pieces of the various afarensis and possible afarensis fossils that have been found. Overall, these skeletal parts reveal an animal well-adapted to arboreal life. Its wrist bones also suggest it was a knuckle-walker. Reconstructions of its pelvis demonstrate its so-called “bipedal” gait was nothing like a human being’s upright gait. In fact, it is only the evolutionary wish to impute a bipedal gait to this animal that marches its fossils upright across the pages of the evolutionary story. https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/lucy/lucy-makeover-shouts-a-dangerously-deceptive-message-about-our-supposed-ancestors/
Here is a humorous video showing how biased evolutionists can be with the fossil evidence
Lucy - The Powersaw Incident - - 32:08 mark of video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI4ADhPVpA0&feature=player_detailpage#t=1928
Other 'Lucy' fossils have been found since the humorous 'powersaw incident' that show that Lucy could not have possibly walked upright.
A Look at Lucy’s Legacy by Dr. David Menton and Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on June 6, 2012 Excerpt: Other analyses taking advantage of modern technology, such as those by Christine Berge published in 199425 and 201026 in the Journal of Human Evolution, offer a different reconstruction allowing for a unique sort of locomotion. Berge writes, “The results clearly indicate that australopithecine bipedalism differs from that of humans. (1) The extended lower limb of australopithecines would have lacked stabilization during walking;,,, Lucy’s bones show the features used to lock the wrist for secure knuckle-walking seen in modern knuckle-walkers. https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/lucy/a-look-at-lucys-legacy/
Here is an anatomically correct reconstruction of Lucy
Lucy - a correct reconstruction - picture https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/campaigns/lucy-exhibit.jpg
Verse:
Genesis 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.… John Lennon - Instant Karma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqP3wT5lpa4
bornagain77_{April 11, 2015
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Kudos to Mike Smith for being observant and daring to follow the observational data. Carefully notice the types of reactions of some of the other scientists. -QQuerius_{April 11, 2015
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Seversky Of course not nothing can stop Darwinian evolution no matter how many times it is falsified. We know that.Andre_{April 11, 2015
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From further down the article:
He stresses, though, that the analysis, which he will present at a meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in San Francisco next week, also confirms that the other 88 fossil fragments belonging to Lucy's skeleton are correctly identified. And the mislabelled baboon bone fragment doesn't undermine Lucy's important position in the evolution of our lineage.
Seversky_{April 11, 2015
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