Missing Link Found Between Human Ancestors 664
simetra writes "Researchers with a University of California, Berkeley team are now saying they have 'proof' of human evolution. Fossils have been found linking two types of pre-human species." From the article: "The remains of eight individuals found in the northeastern Afar region of Ethiopia belonged to the species Australopithecus anamensis -- part of the Australopithecus genus thought to be a direct ancestor to humans, according to a report due to be published Thursday in Nature magazine. 'The fossils are anatomically intermediate between the earlier species Ardipithecus ramidus and the later species Australopithecus afarensis,' he said."
Naww... (Score:4, Funny)
In all seriousness though (Score:4, Insightful)
It's cool that they discovered this but it won't change the debate.
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:5, Informative)
Evolution is (GASP!!!) a theory - a solid, understandable, almost indisputable theory. Think of it like a murder case. The knife, DNA, motive, etc. might certainly remove all reasonable doubt... but without a video of the event, 100% proof of the event is impossible. That's why we have "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" instead of just "proof" - because the evidence is mounted high, but it's not something that's observable in real time.
It leaves open the door for dispute, no matter how flimsy. It's something that we have to deal with, and will have to deal with forever.
Well and... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well and... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always thought one of the best portrayals of this is the musical Jesus Christ, Superstar. If you look carefully at the dynamics of the relationship between Jesus and the Apostles, Jesus is growing increasingly frustrated that the people closest to him just don't get it; so much so that he begins to lose faith himself in the path he's on, and has to seek reassurance that any of his message will survive.
Those people who "don't get it" are the ones who wrote the New Testament. It's even worse with the Old Testament, where the documents we have now are even farther removed from what was written closer to the time of the events described, and in some cases represents written transcription of tales told by word of mouth.
It is likely (and I'm of the opinion that God doesn't exist, but I'm setting that aside for this discussion) that everything in the Bible is simply a bunch of flawed humans trying to get their minds around stuff they didn't really understand, and then it got translated and retranslated and mistranslated and untranslated and other words I can't be arsed to make up at the moment, and doesn't represent what people actually SAW or were told at all. This is possible without being any kind of evidence for or against the existence of God.
So, let's not confuse Creationism with Religion. The one comes from the other, but the two are not the same thing, and invalidation of the one doesn't speak to the other.
Re:Well and... (Score:3, Insightful)
For some unknown reason, a particular sect of christians has decided to pick a fight with a body of facts and conclusions about those facts (instead of wisely ignoring this non-conflict).
Historically, when you mix faith and science- faith loses. Because you -can- measure pie is not "3", because you -can- point to measurable, duplicatable hard edged -facts-, and because the bloody ear
Re:Well and... (Score:3, Funny)
And you're basing this conclusion on your interpretation of 'Jesus Christ Superstar'? Wow. Just wow.
Re:Well and... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well and... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well and... (Score:5, Interesting)
Before Moses, people spoke of seven _generations_ of gods who created the earth, the sixth having the bright idea to create a servant (man) whom would allow the seventh generation to rest while man continued working. Other cultures spoke of the gods creating man and woman together. Others spoke of the creation of Adamah, a man made of red clay, a golem creature. And so on.
"If it was possible for the Torah to be transcribed for 2000 years perfectly, who's to say it hasn't been transcribed perfectly since it was written?"
Modern scholarship and an analysis of the text.
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:3, Insightful)
Gravity is also a theory. I wonder why people aren't arguing that God just will objects in place.
Re:Cease fire... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cease fire... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, "the theory of gravity" is a theory because we don't know how it works. We have theories. Some of those show merit, and are actively being examined scientifically. It may be "as close to fact as we have", but that's not saying anything. We could have almost nothing, and that would still be "as close to fact as we have".
The
Re:Cease fire... (Score:3, Informative)
Law vs theory (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you on? (Score:2, Informative)
What the hell are you talking about? Evolution is a known fact, we can even see species evolving ourselves. Like that lamb that was born with six legs... there isn't a species of lamb with six legs, it parents didn't have six legs, which means that a change must have occured. This animal wasn't able to walk by itself, which means that without human help, it would die... this is the natural selection bit. An animal born with better eyes/ears that could see/hear
Re:What are you on? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What are you on? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm afraid that if you actually read the real history of these finds, you'll find that you are wrong. The proof of evolution does not rest on any one single fossil, and all your examples are rather minor footnotes in the history of evolutionary biology, not "THE" anything. Only one major hominid fossil fraud ever lasted for more than a few years, and that was in part because no one w
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:5, Informative)
In science, proof means "supported by evidence to such an extent that to withhold provisional assent would be perverse". Both stronger and weaker than mathematical proof; stronger in that no axioms are required, weaker because new evidence may be discovered.
Evolution, in the sense of the 3+ Billion year history of life on earth, is as proven as any statement about the real world can be. It is incomplete, but enough of the overall shape of that history is known that some startling predictions can be, and have been, verified by finding new fossils of old creatures to fill in the gaps. This is "Evolution, the fact."
Evolution, in the sense of the mechanisms that account for what we see in the history of life, and in ongoing behavior of living things, ranks with the standard model in physics and the periodic table in chemistry as fundamental explanations of the nature of the universe. This is "Evolution, the theory."
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:4, Insightful)
While I am a scientist, I also believe in God, and that was partially my point in the original post, albeit glibly stated. The amazing thing about the creationists and the fundies is that there is no allowance for thought. Look, we have been given the gift of choice and the gift of intellect so that we can question and discover the wonder of the universe through science. Nothing out there says that God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehova etc...etc...etc... cannot work through science. Of course this is partially the deal that ID folks want to play up, but the problem with their perspective is that they *are* blinded by preconceived notions rather than allowing themselves the dangerous and subversive prospect of questioning and thinking for themselves.
For my part, I don't care what people decide to believe or not as long as they don't tell me what I have/should believe. More importantly, there are fundamental issues related to education and economic development and freedom that are dependent upon having a basic understanding of how things work scientifically and mathematically. To cripple education through the agenda that the ID folks are proposing is doing a disservice to us all.
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:3, Funny)
I speak, of course, of The Great Green Arkleseizure
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:3, Interesting)
>To cripple education through the agenda that the ID folks are proposing is doing a disservice to us all.
That, I think, is a key point, but the damage to education is not the worst part of it. ID is a political, not a scientific, debate based on the distribution of power, not knowledge.
As evidence, I offer the foremost proponent of ID: Seattle's Discovery Institute (link deliberately omitted). In addition to ID, its "fellows" promote classic authoritarianism, including the virtues of torture (look up
Re:In all seriousness though (Score:5, Interesting)
It was good for a chuckle. But it did show me that the moral majority group was alive and well.
Re:Naww... (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Re:Naww... (Score:3, Funny)
But the Bible leads us to believe that God wouldn't do this. However, the sacred scriptures of the Flying Spaghetti Monster explicitly say that He does do this; therefore, FMSism is the one true religion.
Re:Naww... (Score:2)
Re:Naww... (Score:3, Funny)
If you are one of my medical or graduate students, then perhaps that statement is more true that you think.
Re:Naww... (Score:4, Insightful)
What they have done, though, is to create two new gaps.
Re:Naww... (Score:2)
Come on Moderators! It's working! Now is the time to pour it on!!!
It is this hesitancy that ruins your Karma (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It is this hesitancy that ruins your Karma (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent up! Big time... Seriously, yes, there are mod abuses that are a fact here on Slashdot. In fact, I just got modbombed by somebody who did not agree with me regardless of whether or not what I had to say contributed. However, if your contr
Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I'm sure that by now my opinion regarding ID and its proponents is well-known, and I'm equally sure that the majority of the Slashdot community are in agreement, but there is one positive thing I can say about ID: it's thrown a spotlight onto the theory of evolution, and has stimulated many concerned people towards a more comprehensive understanding of the theory (as well as a more comprehensive understanding of the word 'theory' as it pertains to science). Also, it seems like there have been some major advances lately...this latest story hot on the heels of the walking fish [news.com.au] discovery, that have gone a long way towards silencing the detractors of evolution. Whether these advances are truly happening at a faster pace than in the past, or said advances are merely being perceived as such due to the increased attention evolution has been getting of late, is difficult to say...but the central point remains that the theory of evolution and the theory of ID have both been placed under the harsh light of truth, and it is ID, not evolution, that is shrivelling away.
ID has done quite a bit of harm to the minds of young people, but by virtue of the controversy, it has also done some good. Think of it as...well...evolution in action.
Anyway, this latest news is great....now I finally have something solid to point to when my fundie friends stick their fingers in their ears and chant 'missing link! missing link!'.
Rationality will triumph....it's just going to take us longer than we'd like.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:5, Insightful)
If you tell someone "This is the truth" then what you get is someone who believes what he hears. If you show someone how to find the truth, what you get is someone who can make his own descision about what he is told.
You see this every day with stupid lawsuits from people whining because they weren't told that something could be dangerous, when the ability to think rationally and apply logic to a situation should have made that obvious!
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:5, Interesting)
Put another way, offer to pose a word problem to most adults and you'll see pupils dilating in fear. Now, you and I and the rest of the "smart" people know damned well that all a word problem is is a way to test if you can actually connect phyical conditions to a static, rules based concept (typically arithmetic or algebra). It's coming up with 2+3=? instead of a teacher asking you what 2+3 is. The latter is easy, the former is more complex.
This problem is continued at higher levels, even through the graduate degrees. During my masters work, most of the courses (in strucutral engineering) focused on applying the proper techniques to solve for stresses and stains in materials based on a set of given loads. Well, sad to say, that is the easy part of any task. I didn't have a single class that was focused on determining how to figure out what loads were actually going to be acting on the materials. And that happens to be where the real work is. I can teach a high school graduate how to find the right table and apply a simple formula to get an answer. It's much more difficult to figure out where the loads are coming from in a complex load path.
So, yes, we need more focus on critical thought. Unfortunately, I don't see things getting better from either the political or practical side.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:3, Insightful)
Come now. You suggest that the capacity to know how to think has been beaten out of children by their own parents. You mean, those same parents who send their children off to be instructed by strangers at an institution where the curriculum is determined by bureaucrats and business interests? Where they
Stop! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop! (Score:2)
Depends on who you ask. To some, it's a belief. Like me - I believe in evolution, but I still believe it is the work of an intelligent force because (say it ain't so) I'm a Christian.
To others, however, it's cold hard fact. Like a poster said somewhere here - schools teach "fact" instead of how to reach a conclusion on ones own. It is religion that stoutly teaches from an early age that creationism is a "fact" and in
Re:Stop! (Score:3, Insightful)
Philosophical Underpinnings (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue at stake is to teach rational and sound thought in lear
Re:Philosophical Underpinnings (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:2)
The argument about lots of discoveries recently is
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:2)
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:2)
One thing that ID proponents don't seem to realize is that they are playing with fire. They don't seem to realize that rationality is a bully, and if religious types bend at all in the face of it, then their followers might start to come up with some uncomfortable questions of their own, like "How do I know
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:2)
Why is it that these things come as such as surprise? Science has known this stuff for decades. We don't need to look for missing links - they aren't missing at all.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, we've had transitional fossils for
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Good: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, FP?
Re:Oh no! (Score:2)
"The fourth missing link is..."
Re:Oh no! (Score:2)
The one thing interesting to note is that never, in any discussion about evolution, do any creationists/IDer ever provide any evidence to support their claims. None. Nada. Zip. They only come back and say, "Well Evolution doesn't explain [insert whatever alrea
Re:Oh no! (Score:3, Interesting)
you may think it's funny, but this is exactly what creationists do. as the fossil record fills out more and more, they continue to demand finer granularity. no mater how many different stages of evolution are found, there will always be missing intermediaries.
it's like xeno's paradox: you can never get to a certain place because you must first go half the distance, and then half the remainder, then half of that
Will the media stop calling them missing links? (Score:5, Insightful)
The name "missing link" implies there is a problem with evolution, and this "link" solves it, when this is in fact not the case. There will always be gaps in the fossil record, and we should not call every discovery that happens to be within one of those gaps a "missing link".
As is always said, creationists love the discovery of "missing links", since every time one is discovered, the original gap is replaced by two new ones.
Re:Will the media stop calling them missing links? (Score:2)
Re:Will the media stop calling them missing links? (Score:2)
When you don't have a factual rebuttal to factual evid
Re:Will the media stop calling them missing links? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, common descent implies just the opposite. Just as humans are still mammals (if you keep breeding
MOD PARENT UP...eh? (Score:2)
Evolution's validity doesn't, and definitely shouldn't in the media, rely upon finding a fossil for every single step in the multi billion year process. At the rate we're going, in a million years they'll be digging me up and calling me "the missing link."
apes? (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself, Zonk. I know I was never an ape. My distant relatives are a different story...
Re:apes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Carlous Linneaus, a creationist (by default), defined humans as apes long before Darwin was born. An ape is a primate with no tail and certain other diagnostic characteristics.
Doesnt Really Matter (Score:2, Interesting)
If this is a missing link, it creates 2 new ones. Instead of "what species comes between 'Ardipithecus ramidus' and 'Australopithecus afarensis'", you have both "what species comes between 'Ardipithecus ramidus' and 'Australopithecus anamensis'" and "what species comes between 'Australopithecus anamensis' and 'Australopithecus afarensis'".
W
Re:Doesnt Really Matter (Score:2)
Glaucon: How can you convince us if we will not listen?
Socrates: I cannot.
Re:Doesnt Really Matter (Score:2)
Re:Doesnt Really Matter (Score:2)
Exactly right- the only people who truly don't believe that human beings evolve are the same ones who still believe the mark of Cain to be black skin.
Anybody else can just compare their height to the recorded heights of ancestors less than 500 years ago- and to do this all you need to do is visit a museum with a reproduction of one of the
Re:Doesnt Really Matter (Score:2)
I think I just did [nps.gov].
i've got your missing link right here.... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Intelligent design (Score:2)
I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
He's not a programmer, after all, who needs beta testing. Considering the way the world looks, I wish he DID beta test this thing before releasing it. I doubt we'll get an update soon, and the backups are not looking too good either.
Then again, I'd be scared to be rolled back to high school...
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
(a) Many non-vocal religious people think precisely that, but they're not the sort of people who make the news.
(b) Many people believe that God is revealed to mankind primarily by scripture, even if they are not scriptural literalists. Scripture does not describe the creation of being which then change over time.
It's worth noting, incidentally, that fidelity to scripture was originally a r
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why always the human "missing link"? (Score:2)
It seems to me that nature is full of all sorts of implausible creatures -- the stick insect, for example. Have we ever found the missing link between, say, a primordial centipede and the stick insect? Or is there a type of ancient toucan that has a beak that's not quite as big and not quite as colorful as the ones we see today? Ar
Re:Why always the human "missing link"? (Score:2)
I'm not in that filed, but it strikes me as massively incorrect to assert that they are "just" looking for human missing links. In fact, I know that paleontologists love documenting transitional species of all sorts, and have done so time and time again. It should be no mystery as to why documenting what we know about human ancestry is of special interest and gets more press coverage.
I work in the Space field, and think astronomy and planetary science are way cool and such, but I don't know of any more i
Re:Why always the human "missing link"? (Score:2)
Oh wait, at some point evolution would have all primates descent from a single species...
That's where this all started (Score:3, Insightful)
Name your species -- whales, domestic dogs, cattle, modern antelope, sharks, squid, tapeworms, whatever -- and the fossil history won't be perfect but it'll be substantial. Darwin's insight was to explain the mechanism for change between one species and another -- but in terms of physical evidence, "Have we found many other 'missing links'?" is a no-brainer, because even back then the
Yes, and it had a birthday (Score:2)
Proof? (Score:2)
It is clear (Score:2)
- Andrew
Question Mark (Score:2)
All this marvel would have never happened (Score:5, Funny)
Umm.. ok but ... (Score:2)
But the flood existed! It did, the book tells you it did and you have NO proof that it didn't. Ha! Evolution? Who cares? But the flood, the flood!
In other words, as soon as you prove one thing wrong, they'll start riding the next. Same thing that happend to the flat Earth or the sun rotating around it.
Cartoons aren't the Gospel? (Score:2, Funny)
If they were looking for the missing link... (Score:2)
destroyed? (Score:2)
Proof. Yeah. (Score:2)
We have sped up evolution for our own purposes: selective breeding.
We have slowed it down for our own purposes: again, selective breeding.
We have seen species develop into "other thans" in the last 200 years.
So, I ask, with all humility, why the hell are we still trying to find evidence of evolution when we already have it?
Context for the results (Score:4, Informative)
Here [si.edu] is a nice diagram that gives some context to the finds. "Missing Link" is hype and "Proof of Evolution" is very misleading. But the diagram is an amazing summary and speaks for itself.
One way to point out inconsistencies (Score:4, Funny)
(They won't concede the point, of course, but it's fun to watch them backpedal, spin, skid, etc.)
"Proof" = Grandstanding? (Score:5, Insightful)
Count the number of times they use language like "proved", and also words like "for the first time", "unambiguous", "It is the only place in the world",
This is not the language of careful scientists. These are people touting themselves, their research and their region in spectacular ways. It is grandstanding. It may be that the results are valid, but I think we have every right to be skeptical until other scientists weigh in.
Re:Suuuuure they are (Score:5, Insightful)
Would anyone say a metallurgist has an anti-Christian bias?
Re:Suuuuure they are (Score:2)
The true problem is that reality has an anti-Christian bias. There's not much that can be done about that.
Re:Suuuuure they are (Score:2)
I would say that sciecne defintiely has a bias against "God of the Gaps," Christian or no. I suppose it's possible to design your deity out of the gaps, which science keeps closing, but that's theology, not religion.
Re:Suuuuure they are (Score:2, Interesting)
How much you want to bet these guys have an anti-christian bias?
Are you suggesting rationality can't co-exist with religious beliefs?
Re:Suuuuure they are (Score:2)
It's not at all inconsistent with observed evidence to postulate that some Divine Being (hereinafter referred to as Fred) decided to create a universe that would end up in the creation of something very, very similar to today's Man, so Fred spent some time and developed a bunch of rules and cause-effect relationships and etc, then set it in motion, observed it for billyuns of years, and the resul
Re:Suuuuure they are (Score:5, Insightful)
The facts have an anti-fundamentalist bias.
Oh, but that's just microevolution, you see (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh, but that's just microevolution, you see (Score:2)
I think you're giving them too much credit.
Re:Oh, but that's just microevolution, you see (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, sure, that's what they say.. but every time I ask if they've got a few billion years while I demonstrate, they suddenly lose interest!
Re:so are they humans or are they monkeys? (Score:2)
Humans are apes.
But monkeys are not apes, and the fossils are not monkeys.
Re:Wht the freak is evolution??? (Score:2)
Re:Tip your bartenders and waitresses.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Repeating the EXACT same thing TWICE, doesn't work either, sorry.
"The Bible precludes any possibility of evolution."
If you read it that way, I guess. But then the Bible is clearly pretty wrong, on the evidence. If you take the Bible as true over and above the evidence, then you are contradicting yourself, because before you seemed to be claiming that there was empirical evidence showing the bible to be good history. You can't have it both ways.
"Re