We’ve been hearing good things about the new film about the Scopes trial, Alleged

"So, Osborn was not claiming Nebraska Man to be an ancestor of ours? Looks to me like he was" --As I said, he believed the tooth to be from a hominid (ape-man), but never said it was an ancestor. There are a lot of hominids that aren't ancestors - most aren't. He and Elliot Smith were probably the only scientists to go so far as to proclaim it as a hominid. As Osborn explains: “The Hesperopithecus molar cannot be said to resemble any known type of human molar very closely. It is certainly not closely related to Pithecanthropus erectus in the structure of the molar crown….It is therefore a new and independent type of Primate, and we must seek more material before we can determine its relationships.” I'm no fan of Osborn though. He was careless (he and Elliot Smith were also, probably not coincidentally, two of the biggest supporters of Piltdown man), a sensationalist, loved the media spotlight and would say things to get into the spotlight, and racist (even by the standards of the time). There actually isn't much I dispute with in the site you gave. goodusername

http://creation.com/fresh-look-at-nebraska-man Enjoy more info about Nebraska man at link above. Fred

See quote below from an article written by Osborn to refute Bryan. So, Osborn was not claiming Nebraska Man to be an ancestor of ours? Looks to me like he was. Osborn fell-in for all sorts of non-scientific stuff (like blacks not being of the same species as Caucasians, as I recall). "What shall we do with the Nebraska tooth? Shall we destroy it because it jars our long preconceived notion that the family of manlike apes never reached the western world … ? Or shall we continue our excavations, difficult and baffling as they are, in the confident hope, inspired by the admonition of Job, that if we keep speaking to the earth we shall in time hear a more audible and distinct reply? Certainly we shall not banish this bit of Truth because it does not fit in with our preconceived notions and because at present it constitutes infinitesimal but irrefutable evidence that the man-apes wandered over from Asia into North America." Fred

Interesting comment by someone in the trailer, that Nebraska man and Neanderthal are links in an "unbroken chain". I doubt anyone thought in 1925 that we had an "unbroken chain" yet in the fossil record of humans. At best, we had a few links. And no one thought Nebraska man was one of those links. Nice attempt at a pot shot at evolution, but, at best, even its chief defenders - Osborn, Elliot Smith, and William Gregory (actually, maybe its only defenders) - thought that it may be a hominid tooth of some sort, but no one said it was an ancestor (after all, it was just a tooth). Also, Neanderthal was mostly seen as a side branch since, after all, anatomically modern humans already existed along side them. Not a good sign IMO that "it says stuff about Darwinism as it really was". It doesn't look as if that's what they were interested in doing. goodusername