Ramapithecus
Thought to be the ancestor of man - intermediate between man and ape - on it's way to becoming man - based on two fragments of an incomplete jaw that was arranged to look parabolic. It was said that the jaw was more similar to human than that of any ape. Then, a complete jaw was found. the true shape of the jaw was not parabolic, but rather U-shaped, a distinctive of apes. Ramapithecus is now believed to be the ancestor of the Orangutan. The species was renamed Sivapithecus, and Ramapithecus was actually the females of that genus. Ramapithecus was not our ancestor!
Nebraska Man
Means "ape of the western world." Constructed from a single tooth found in 1922 by Harold Cook. Scientists saw the tooth as intermediate between man and ape. They called the species Hesperopithecus Haroldcookii. Hesperopithecus means "Western ape." Then, in 1927, more parts of the skeleton were found. Based upon these findings, it was realized that the tooth belonged to neither man or ape, but to a species of extinct wild pig called Prosthennops Serus. What a mistake, constructing Nebraska man ALL from what was nothing but a PIG'S TOOTH! So funny! Nebraska Man was not our ancestor!
Orce Man
Said to be the oldest human. Scientists based it on a skull fragment. It was discovered in 1982. Then, it was realized That the skull fragment was neither man nor ape but belonged to a FOUR-MONTH-OLD DONKEY! Orce Man was not our ancestor!
Southwest Colorado Man was based upon a single tooth, this time, the tooth of a horse.
Taung Child
Scientists said that it might be a missing link between man and ape. But many experts believe it was only a young gorilla. It might be a living fossil, showing that the gorilla has stayed the same for at least 3 million years, but we'll get to "living fossils" later in this article.
Zinjanthropus Boisei is now considered to be just an ordinary ape.
Australopithecines
Many scientists still believe, and most textbooks still claim, this is the ancestor of man. They believed it was intermediate between man and ape. They said it walked upright in a human manner, based upon the knee joint of "Lucy," the most complete australopithecine fossil until 2006. But studies of the entire anatomy of "Lucy," not just the knee joint, now show this is very unlikely, although the footprints suggest they walked upright. The knee joint was probably for something like climbing trees, and other apes and monkeys had a knee joint just like that. Additionally, The jaw was more similar to that of a chimpanzee than to that of a human. In 2006, a more complete Australopithecus Afarensis fossil was found, and its features were clearly apelike. So there is little, if any, that make the australopithecines intermediate between man and ape. They are strikingly similar to apes, but greatly distinct from humans. Australopithecines were probably extinct apes, rather than man's ancestor.
Homo Habilis was very ape-like and should never have been classified as man-like(genus Homo). Some experts believe Homo Habilis fossils were actually a combination of Australopithecus and homo erectus fossils.
Ida Man turned out to only be an extinct lemur!
Java Man
Based upon a skullcap, thighbone, and two molar teeth.
First Homo Erectus found. Its scientific name is Pithecanthropus Erectus. Many experts consider that Java Man was only a large gibbon. The skullcap has rough similarities to the cranium of a gibbon. However, the skullcap was too large - Java Man had a cranial capacity of 940 cc, while a gibbon has a cranial capacity of only 100 cc. So the skullcap might have been a man while the thigh bone and the two molar teeth were gibbon. Not really sure.
Scientists suggested Peking Man by studying a single tooth. Then, more fossils - all of them skulls - were found. Most of the skulls were not very complete.
See more at
Evolution of Man - Hoaxes - Controversial stuff
Exceptionally ignorant post.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the fossils presented as Ramapithecus were found to be from an extinct ape, Sivapithecus.
The generally poor quality of reporting of our human ancestral lineage is amazing. There was a pre-print of a new paper “A new great ape with startling resemblances to African members of the hominin tribe, excavated from the Mid-Vallesian Dinotheriensande of Eppelsheim. First report (Hominoidea, Miocene, MN 9, Proto-Rhine River, Germany)” (Lutz, H., Engel, T., Lischewsky, B. & Berg, A. von (2017): – Mainzer naturwissenschaftliches Archiv 54, Mainz) that attracted ridiculous headlines. This is just after the publication of “Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe" (Jochen Fuss, Nikolai Spassov, David R. Begun, Madelaine Böhme, May 22, 2017 PLoS ONE12(5): e0177127).
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam_Bonwitt/publication/320518472_A_new_great_ape_with_startling_resemblances_to_African_members_of_the_hominin_tribe_excavated_from_the_Mid-Vallesian_Dinotheriensande_of_Eppelsheim_First_report_Hominoidea_Miocene_MN_9_Proto-Rhine_Riv/links/59e9bee2a6fdccfe7f0601d6/A-new-great-ape-with-startling-resemblances-to-African-members-of-the-hominin-tribe-excavated-from-the-Mid-Vallesian-Dinotheriensande-of-Eppelsheim-First-report-Hominoidea-Miocene-MN-9-Proto-Rhine.pdf
The Graecopithecus fossils were presented by Fuss et al (2017) as early human ancestors, not "the first humans." Nor were they presented as the last common ancestor between human and chimp lineages. But many news headlines were falsely claiming "humans evolved in Europe!" Soon after the absurd media distortions died down they are fired up again by Lutz et al (2017).
The science reported starts with the fact that the closest living relatives of modern humans are the African great apes; the chimps and gorillas.
From genetic studies it had been estimated that our last common ancestors (LCA) with the other great apes lived about eight to 14 million years ago. Priya Moorjani, Carlos Eduardo G. Amorim, Peter F. Arndt, and Molly Przeworski 2016 "Variation in the molecular clock of primates" Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.; 113(38): 10607–10612. concluded; “Taking this approach, we estimate the human and chimpanzee divergence time is 12.1 million years, and the human and gorilla divergence time is 15.1 million years.”
The oldest African fossils of our ancestral line are Orrorin tugenensis ( ~5.8–6.0 Ma), and Sahelanthropus tchadensis (~6–7 Ma). However, both of these species have a number of characteristics like up-right posture, and relatively smaller teeth to rule them out as being the last common ancestor (LCA). They were already ‘too human.’ About 14 million years ago, there were a group of apes diverging on the edges of the expanding savannas in Southern Europe. The human-chimp LCA was somewhere in between those two known groups of fossils.
The dryopithecines were Eurasian apes commonly thought by professionals to be the closest candidates to the LCA. Fossils for 8 species in that groups are known dating from over 20 million to just 7 million years ago. This covered the time period that the human-chimp LCA would have lived. The study that has poor creationists and racists so confused used CAT scans to look at the dental structure of Graecopithecus freybergi from Greece, and Graecopithecus sp. from Azmaka, Bulgaria. Their approximate age was just over 7 million years ago.
Their conclusion was that there were dental features placing Graecopithecus into the human side of the lineage, and the hunt for the human-chimp LCA continues. But the real discovery is that the search area for the LCA is not limited to Africa. These Graecopithecus fossils were not "the first humans." If we were to see one in the flesh it would be in a Zoo, not in a suit. The modern humans emerged from African migrations into Eurasia, and subsequent divergence and recombination over the last 400 thousand years.
Since Oct. 20, 2017 we have seen more popular press stupidity following the pre-publication release of Lutz et al. Their discovery was two teeth they attribute to a single individual. While newspapers trumpet the “re-writing of human evolution,” the facts are that the new find is not assigned any exact affiliation, but are suggested to be a new species in the Dryopithecus group. They have less affiliation with the hominins than Graecopithecus.
DeleteBut the real discovery is that the search area for the LCA is not limited to Africa.
It is much better to read the actual scientific reports than the confused presentations of journalists.
Carol V. Ward, Ashley S. Hammond, J. Michael Plavc, David R.Begune 2019 "A late Miocene hominid partial pelvis from Hungary" Journal of Human Evolution
Abstract: A recently discovered partial hipbone attributed to the 10 million-year-old fossil ape Rudapithecus hungaricus from Rudabánya, Hungary, differs from the hipbones of cercopithecids and earlier apes in functionally significant ways.
Gerard D.Gierliński, Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, Martin G. Lockley, Athanassios Athanassiou, Charalampos Fassoulas, Zofia Dubicka, Andrzej Boczarowski, Matthew R.Bennett, Per Erik Ahlberg
2017 "Possible hominin footprints from the late Miocene (c. 5.7 Ma) of Crete?" Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Volume 128, Issues 5–6, October 2017, Pages 697-710
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001678781730113X
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ReplyDeleteThe "Nebraska Man" was an interesting mistake. Nebraska Man was named in 1922 by Henry Fairfield Osborn based on a fragmented fossil tooth. It was discovered by Harold Cook, a rancher in Nebraska, on his property in 1917. For all the details see; http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html
ReplyDeleteIt was not considered a significant "evidence" for human evolution. In fact, Osborn found the funding for the larger excavation and study that proved the tooth was not human.
The description of Australopithecines is extremely confused. "Lucy" refers to the remains of a specific individual (AL-288-1), which did *not* have a complete knee joint preserved (although the left femur and upper part of the right tibia were preserved, so the shape of the knee joint could be inferred). The knee joint (AL-129-1) is from a different individual of the same species. Since then the remains of several dozen individuals have been found, giving us a pretty good idea of the overall anatomy.
ReplyDeleteThe knee joint suggests bipedal walking, as do the femur, pelvis, spine, foot bones, and skull. It does *not* look like the knee joints of climbers like gibbons, orangutans, or chimps.
From the neck up, Australopithecines were very ape-like - similar jaws, small cranium, etc. From the neck down it's a different story - they clearly stood and walked upright, and are much more similar to modern humans than apes.
An ape-headed human?
ReplyDelete