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Scientists Discover Common Ancestor of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat May 16, 2009 12:27 PM
from the your-n-mother-had-a-lengthy-tail dept.
from the your-n-mother-had-a-lengthy-tail dept.
reporter writes "According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters. The 47 million year old fossils were discovered in Germany. The ancestor physically resembles today's lemur. Quoting: 'The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery. According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy. Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.'"
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Ancient Fossil Offers Clues To Primate Evolution 311 comments
langelgjm sends in an update to a story we discussed over the weekend about an extremely well-preserved fossil of an ancient primate, Darwinius masillae, that sheds light on an important area of evolution. The 47 million-year-old specimen has now been officially unveiled, and while many media outlets are stumbling over themselves with phrases like "missing link" and "holy grail," it's clearly a very impressive find. "Discovered two years ago, the exquisitely preserved specimen is not a direct ancestor of monkeys and humans, but hints at what such an ancestor might have looked like. According to researchers, 'The specimen has an unusual history: it was privately collected and sold in two parts, with only the lesser part previously known. The second part, which has just come to light, shows the skeleton to be the most complete primate known in the fossil record.' The scientific article describing the find was published yesterday in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal PLoS ONE. Google's home page is also celebrating the find with a unique image." Science blogger Brian Switek offers some criticism of the academic paper and the media swarm, saying, "I would have hoped that this fossil would receive the care and attention it deserves, but for now it looks like a cash cow for the History Channel. Indeed, this association may not have only presented overblown claims to the public, but hindered good science, as well."
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Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Funny)
Trying to learn what we don't know is how we grow.
I found the missing link a little while ago though- I had a conversation over coffee a couple of weeks ago with someone who turned out to be a creationist. We ended up having the dreaded creationism-vs-darwinism "discussion". The gentleman in question was extremely stubborn, and his coffin-nail-arguement against darwinism, believe it or not, was that there was "no proof of evolution". I spewed trying to contain my laughter. Needless to say, the conversation ended at that point quite abruptly.
A fascinating discovery though.
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Funny)
Give him time. I once believed in creationism, but slowly, over time, I changed. Now I believe in evolution.
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creationism/evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, thousands of years ago, we were different
Thousands of years ago, we were not different. Tens of thousands of years ago, we may have been slightly different.
I believe we were created by god, to evolve.
There is an unbroken chain of a billion years of evolution connecting us to simple bacteria. If God created any species from scratch, it must have been simple bacteria, but the rest evolved from that.
What's interesting, is when I say that, depending on which side of the creationism/evolution debate you are on, sparks controversy from both sides ;)
Well, from the scientific side, you spark controversy because you're wrong. From the creationism side, you spark controversy because you use the "evolution" word.
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Re:Actually.... (Score:5, Informative)
There's plenty of evidence that simple bacteria could have evolved naturally out of the chemical soup present on earth at that time.
That evidence is suggestive; there are reasonable alternative explanations.
The evidence that humans evolved from bacteria, however, is incontrovertible; there simply is no reasonable alternative explanation.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
creationism is very much a minority opinion amongst christians (in fact I've only ever met one who thought like that, and I've met a lot of christians over the years). The belief in a literal 7 days is something that historically would have been laughed at long before darwin. A few noisy fundies in the US don't get to choose what christianity is, no matter what you might want to think.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Informative)
creationism is very much a minority opinion amongst christians (in fact I've only ever met one who thought like that, and I've met a lot of christians over the years). The belief in a literal 7 days is something that historically would have been laughed at long before darwin. A few noisy fundies in the US don't get to choose what christianity is, no matter what you might want to think.
I'm sorry but what possible evidence other than the one anecdotal occurrence can you offer? I have statistics that show that creationism combined with 'god guiding evolution' is a shared belief by an overwhelming majority of Americans. Even if you remove 'god guiding evolution' from the equation the numbers believing in strict creationism are close to half of Americans believing in it.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-06-07-evolution-debate_N.htm [usatoday.com]
Two-thirds in the poll said creationism, the idea that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years, is definitely or probably true.
http://people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=118 [people-press.org]
Surveys are also fairly consistent in their estimates of how many Americans believe in evolution or creationism. Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life, while comparable numbers accept the idea that humans evolved over time. (But keep in mind that many people who believe in evolution in the U.S. think that god was making humans evolve).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evolution-Creationism-Intelligent-Design.aspxGallupPollincreationismandevolutiontrendsfrom1982to2008. [gallup.com]
Breakdown of creationism and evolution views between Bush and Kerry voters in 2008.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Americans form only a fraction of Christianity. The biggest christian denomination, the catholics, consider evolution compatible with their faith.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
"Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life"
That's a strange definition. Evolution implies that human beings developed over millions of years, but that implication is but a small part of Evolution. And some evolutionary biologists, including SJ Gould would quibble about "less advanced".
It's a bit like describing quantum mechanics as the idea that a cat can simultaneously be dead and not dead.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Informative)
You must not be an American. Or know very many protestants.
Almost everyone I know is protestant. The vast vast vast majority of them accept Genesis as the literal description of creation.
And I would say that's not an abnormal figure:
An ABC News poll released Sunday found that 61 percent of Americans believe the account of creation in the Bible's book of Genesis is "literally true" rather than a story meant as a "lesson."
[...]
The poll, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points, was conducted Feb. 6 to 10 among 1,011 adults
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/feb/16/20040216-113955-2061r/ [washingtontimes.com]
This was just the first poll that came up on google. It falls in line with all the other polls I've seen on the subject.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
You must not be an American. Or know very many protestants.
Almost everyone I know is protestant. The vast vast vast majority of them accept Genesis as the literal description of creation.
You must only know evangelical protestants. Episcopalians have no trouble with evolution. The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. I don't think Methodists have much of a problem with evolution either.
I am an atheist with degrees in the biological sciences. I have no problem with Christians who believe that god guided evolution. The fundamental source of variation at work in evolutionary processes is mutation. This is mediated by radiation and other quantum mechanical processes. So evolution is funamentally stochastic. It can have many possible outcomes dependant on what mutations are presented when and where. A sane and scientific Christian believes that God guided it by presenting the mutations required to bring about the world He has chosen. While I interpret it on the basis of the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM.
The two of us live in the same scientific world and we are likely to agree on the same evidence and its interpretation in evolutionary theory. No my problem is with the YEC's and ID people.
The YEC's are obvious raving loony fundies, the American Taleban. While IDers try to subvert the theory of evolution by by presenting non science (nonsense) as science.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Informative)
Look again, please. The Catholic Church's _historical_ beliefs on creationism, evolution, etc. have reflected all sorts of problems with it. The evolution of simpler to more sophisticated creatures, without divine personal guidance, flies in the face of the 'manifest destiny' and the 'right of kings' which are critical to European and Christian politics of the last few thousand years.
Uh, this is kind of confused. Manifest Destiny [wikipedia.org] was pretty much an American thing. Perhaps you're thinking of Lebensraum [wikipedia.org], which was a 20th century German doctrine. Yeah, there have been plenty of expansionists in European history, but most of them just wanted to take over their neighbors and didn't have any fancy ideological reason for it. Evolution didn't affect that one way or another.
Not sure how the divine right of kings fits in here, either. The Church wasn't exactly happy about the divine right of kings, since an absolute monarch took away from the Church's power. The Church wanted to be able to depose (or at least undermine) monarchs it didn't like. If the right of kings was divine, they couldn't do that. Again, it's pretty independent of evolution, and by the time Darwin came along the era of the divine right of kings was pretty much over.
Anyway, the Catholic Church has learned from all that bad press they got with that Gallileo fellow and remained neutral at worst over the years. There have been individual Catholics and some Catholic organizations which have opposed evolution, but they're in the minority and don't reflect official policy. Yes, the official policy is to squeeze God in there (e.g., "special creation" of the soul), but only as an extra. They don't make any scientific claims at all.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking their name and their religion and then doing as you please.
Who gets to decide what Christianity is supposed to be? You?
....
Turn in your atheist card at the door. I don't want people like you to be in any way associated with people like me. I don't think I'm alone in that either.
So you can ask someone to turn in their Atheist card for trying to judge what Christianity is, but you can judge what Atheism is? You sound like one of them.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Informative)
The oldest Christian church (the Catholics) have no beef with evolution.
Yes, they do. The Catholic Church cherry-picks a few bits of Evolution to call "ok", to try and distance themselves from the crazier Creationists out there, but they still think humans are a "special creation" and, therefore, not the product of Evolution.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
(Boy, is this going to cost me karma...)
You're an idiot. FYI, I have mod points today, and still I decided to post into this thread just to be able tell you that you're an idiot.
And now, since I'm out of modding this thread anyway, let's get it straight, piece by piece.
Who gets to decide what Christianity is supposed to be? You?
Several instances, but, ultimately, it's the Pope. However, it's not like the Pope simply pulls phrases out of his ass and then they're declared truth. It's only when a certain issue now and then needs clarification that cannot be archieved otherwise that the Pope dictates how to be thought of that issue. It's then that the Pope speaks ex cathedra, and it's only then that he is regarded as an infallible instance and whatever he says is regarded as true.
The reasoning behind this is less to create truth, but instead to allow a large community to start from the same premisses and end fundamental quarrels without a sense.
However, this doesn't happen fairly often. Since 1870, the Pope has spoken ex cathedra twice so far, last time having been 1950; before 1870, there are somewhere between 10-20 documented ex cathedra decrees.
For all other cases, what Christianity is, is less of a "decission" as in "law", it's rather an "interpretation" of certain events. Church people sit together and decide what position to take towards a certain event.
The oldest Christian church (the Catholics) have no beef with evolution.
There's more truth to that sentence than you probably wanted it to.
You see, the Church absolutely has no interrest whatsoever in getting involved in evolution. But that's not because they disapprove evolution. It's because the Church has no interrest in getting involved in science questions at all. (That might have been different in the Middle Ages, when people used the bible as a poor replacement for physics, however that's not today.) But then again, like in any other matter, there are those who understand and those who don't understand Christianity. Whoever tells you that the Church disapproves evolution either didn't understand Christianity, or is simply ripping you off for one reason or the other.
The Church stays away from evolution is not because they disapprove with it, it's because evolution is not their job. Period. Church may have an oppinion about how to use science to the best of mankind, blabla yadda yadda. But the Church won't tell you how to do science, just as little as they're going to accept advice from you on how to do religion.
Your statement would mean, in car analogy, that a car mechanics guy staying away from a baby that needs a diper change disapproves with the idea of having babies.
Turn in your atheist card at the door. I don't want people like you to be in any way associated with people like me. I don't think I'm alone in that either.
I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual -- I have a lot of atheist friends, none of which I think would like to be associated with you right now...
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Funny)
(Boy, is this going to cost me karma...)
Hey, would you mind if I borrowed that next time I want to get modded up? Thanks!
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
If you don't consider the literal interpretation what do you consider? What is your 'source' on God? If the bible means nothing then where do you get your religious beliefs from? The church? That sounds risky. If it is a personal attachment to something spiritual then why the need to go to some building on Sunday? Surely you didn't just 'feel' that God wanted you to go to church on Sundays. What is the basis for your religion if not the bible? And if it is the bible then how can you not believe 80% of it?
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
First of, I am atheist.
> Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God."
Why is religion and evolution irreconcilable? If I accept an omnipotent and omnipresent god, what is so strange at accepting, that said god created a universe, with exactly those laws, which science deciphers, which obviously lead to our existence? Is it disprovable? No. Does it contradict with scientific knowledge? No. Is it compatible with further scientific findings? Yes. So, why bother, when you have people, which claim, the earth is 4000 years old.
> If the bible means nothing then where do you get your religious beliefs from? The church? That sounds risky.
Who says the Bible means nothing?
My knowledge of theology is certainly incomplete, but AFAIK:
The Bible is open to interpretation for several reasons. But how do you interpret it?
As there is only one truth, there can be only one meaning. But who determines what is true? There is one group, which says, the successors of the apostles determine the one truth. This is the Catholic Church. One group claims the successor of Peter, sitting in Rome, presides over the others and is ultimately right. That is the Roman Catholic Church.
Protestants claim "Sola Scriptura", the scripture is the authoritative word of god. Which in turn can mean, there is no authoritative interpretation, but each persons. That doesn't mean you can cherry pick, but that you have to do your best to understand the teachings revealed in the Bible, especially through the life of Jesus, and lead your life accordingly. How do you treat other people. Not necessarily that you literally believe every single word of a scripture.
At least, that is the position most protestant in Europe seem to have.
The other meaning it can have, is the literal one, which several US protestants seem to follow.
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Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
God created man in his image. Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
There's this really cool literary tool that you should check out. It's called metaphor.
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Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Insightful)
FYP:
It is important not to associate belief with knowledge.
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Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time we stopped referring to them as creationist and start calling them what they really are: evolution deniers.
Congratulations on your enlightenment by the way. It takes an open mind to weigh the evidence and change your point of view. You are to be commended.
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Re:Evolution is real -- even for modern man. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't even know where to begin with you. First off, you don't seem to know how evolution works. Second of all, social evolution plays the greatest roles in the natural selection of humans. If your standpoint were true, then the Indians and Chinese (the greatest of the populations) would be the "fittest" species. The Africans have been subject to tyranny of countless nations, and now they face the oppression of their own dictators. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but one's scientific success is heavily dependent on luck and ambition, not just intelligence. Otherwise, women would seem extremely inferior to men in science, which is not true because I know countless women who perform better than men academically. It pisses me off when uneducated people start talking out of their ass. I'm not even claiming that you're 100% wrong, just that you have overlooked so many other variables (mainly nurture over nature).
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Re:Evolution is real -- even for modern man. (Score:4, Funny)
You should ask one of them to explain "anecdotal evidence" to you. Then maybe some statistics, including significance levels and sampling theory.
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Re:Evolution is real -- even for modern man. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Africans have been subject to tyranny of countless nations, and now they face the oppression of their own dictators. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but one's scientific success is heavily dependent on luck and ambition, not just intelligence.
There's even more to it, Africa's major axis is north-south instead of east-west, which means the continent has a lot of variance in climate with a lot of natural barriers (think about the Sahara) for species, knowledge and trade to cross. This as opposed to North America or Eurasia, both of which have east-west axes with a steady climate that's good for agriculture and diffusion of technology and trade.
Also, Africa has virtually no domesticable large mammals and large parts of Africa have been (or still are) not fit for agriculture at all. Finally, when Europeans started colonizing African countries they had a head-start in technology, and resistance to many diseases they were exposed to living next to their domesticated animals (pigs, horses, sheep), resistance the Africans never had a chance to develop. The same holds for South America, people still like to think the Inca's and the Aztecs where conquered by military force, while in fact their population was decimated by germs like the flu, bubonic pest etc.
Mandatory reading for the guy you responded to and for anyone interested to know why North America and Europe became the most developed societies, and not Africa, South-America or Polynesia (all of which at one point in history had a lead):
http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242498876&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
For those who don't like reading, the spoiler: it has nothing to do with intelligence/inventiveness, genetic superiority, laziness or any other form of inherited or acquired traits.
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Slashdotters? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotters? (Score:5, Funny)
Not true. We're social, but only with our own kind. For instance, I saw the new Star Trek movie last night. When the house lights went up afterwards, I looked around and noticed the kids had already left and those who remained were my fellow nerds. It was so obvious that we all kind of laughed about it on the way out of the theater.
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Re:Slashdotters? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, no doubt, although most of the nerds were there with women, too. Nerdettes, perhaps. But since they were mostly older folk, like me, they were probably married, also like me, and, hence, don't actually have sex any more.
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Disappointing (Score:3, Funny)
I wanted to see pictures of this fossil. Preferably high-resolution images that I can gaze and and imagine what it looked like with flesh and fur, climbing, running and using simple tools. But no... no such thing. Just a picture of a lemur.
"World's Most Overhyped Science Headline?" ... (Score:5, Informative)
"How is the news being anticipated in the scientific community? 'I honestly think this is an incredible job of marketing,' says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has not seen the report but has read the news. He points out that other fossils of similar age from China, Myanmar, and India have also been proposed as some of the earliest anthropoids. 'At this stage, color me skeptical.'"
Well.
CC.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"How is the news being anticipated in the scientific community? 'I honestly think this is an incredible job of marketing,' says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has not seen the report but has read the news. He points out that other fossils of similar age from China, Myanmar, and India have also been proposed as some of the earliest anthropoids. 'At this stage, color me skeptical.'"
So he admits to not RTFA but won't believe it? Yup, clearly a slashdotter.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A guy from a competing institution who hasn't even seen the report, is skeptical?
No shit - how is that a point?
This is old news (Score:4, Funny)
We've actually known about Rosie O'Donnell for some time now.
Scientific Secrecy = Contradiciton of terms (Score:4, Informative)
Always maintain a strong healthy skepticism of any "Scientific Secrecy" unless it has a monetary basis, (patent medicines for example) or a strategic value (military).
There is no reason this type of information should be secret. In fact, just the opposite. Publish early, publish often would be the best prescription in such cases.
Axiom of the monkey stories (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no need to argue with them, that is what they want, they want the air of publicity. As for the rest of us Darwinist Protestants, I, like many, celebrate this find and look forward to the addition to the sum total of human knowledge it will provide
and slashdotters to? (Score:5, Funny)
Then the only appropriate classificaiton name would be "Cowardus Anonymous Vulgaris".
Re:In Germany???? (Score:5, Funny)
"Is this a revolutionary finding? Shouldn't the common ancestors be in Africa?"
If this is really a common ancestor of Slashdotters, the maternal basement/cave will be nearby and yield further clues.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're confusing the birth of modern humans (homo sapiens) with what is being described here as a common ancestor of monkeys apes and humans.
In comparison, it would be like when did the birds break off of the dinosaurs, and when did the blue jay first come around.
Re:In Germany???? (Score:5, Funny)
No he's not confusing anything. These lemur-like creatures were the nerds of their day. Of course they lived in maternal basement caves. Look at their eyes, man. Probably hopped up on Mountain Cacao Pods all the time. They invented the net, and spent all their time trying to find interesting things to put in their nets.
Sadly, this race of proto-nerds did not survive, as the males of the species were singularly unattractive to the females and they were unable to procreate.
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Re:In Germany???? (Score:4, Funny)
Okay, maybe they died out because they had no sense of humor.
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Re:In Germany???? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapid [wikipedia.org]:
Fossils of adapids are known from North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Adapids are one of two groups of Eocene primates with a geographic distribution spanning holarctic continents, the other being the omomyids (Omomyidae)
Re:In Germany???? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I can has DNA sample? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll believe it when it's been peer reviewed and the hypothesis has been examined by lots of people and agreed on.
Fakery happens. Sheer bad judgement happens. The fact that this has been kept secret is a huge red flag... science doesn't keep things secret.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
getting better all the time (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I know DNA from something this old is practically impossible.
Actually that request is nowhere near as tall an order today as it was just a few years ago. You likely know that we have already partially reconstructed the Woolly Mammoth genome [washingtonpost.com] and are working with DNA from the (extinct) Tasmanian Tiger [bbc.co.uk] as well.
Our techniques have even allowed us to extract proteins from Tyrannosaurus Rex [sciencemag.org] as well as a Hadrosaur [sciencemag.org] for proteomics approaches to analyzing extinct species.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I always thought it was in January of 1970...
Re:The article has suggestive and leading lanuage. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a "Creation Research Institute" talking point.
In actual fact, carbon dating is able to give the ages of formerly living materials up to about 60,000 years old. Any older, and the C-14 that the method relies on will have completely decayed. No material has ever been carbon dated as "millions of years old". I know of several hoaxes involving artifacts supposedly excavated from coal-mines and the like, for example the London Hammer. This is almost certainly what you refer to. The keepers of these ersatz fossils have never permitted them to be dated or thoroughly examined by actual scientists. Draw your own conclusions about somebody refusing to allow their claims to be tested.
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