Oldest Human Fossil Fills In 2.8-Million-Year-Old Gap In Evolution 94
GeekyKhan writes Archaeologists have unearthed a human jawbone—with teeth-- that is believed to be the oldest remains ever found from early humans. It belonged to the earliest specimen of Homo and dates back 2.8 million years. From NPR: "Although it's risky to say you've got the first or oldest of anything, Brian Villmoare, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is sure he and his team have the earliest specimen of Homo, the human genus. 'Oh, yeah, it definitely is,' he says. 'We were looking for it — and by miraculous chance we happened to find it.' Villmoare and an international team from the U.S. and Ethiopia found a lower jaw with five teeth in a region of Ethiopia called Afar. They were working a hill that was full of fossils. 'I was on the other side of the hill,' he recalls, 'and they said, 'Brian! Brian! Come over here.' The partial jawbone — just the left side – was lying on the ground, having eroded out of the hill. Several dating methods confirmed its age as roughly 400,000 years older than the previous record for a human-related fossil."
Damn... A win for the creationists (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Damn... A win for the creationists (Score:4, Funny)
And they made my coffee get cold too! Damn those "scientists"! I heard they're responsible for getting Firefly cancelled also.
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Re:Damn... A win for the creationists (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, to a creationist, the fact that there are no intermediaries between you and your parents is proof that you are not related.
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Well, to a creationist, the fact that there are no intermediaries between you and your parents is proof that you are not related.
And the "logic" behind that "thinking" is risible.
"Irreducible complexity" is the same as "I can't figure out how it happened so God must have done it!" As if the limits of one's intellect constrain reality. Talk about intellectual arrogance.
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Well, to a creationist, the fact that there are no intermediaries between you and your parents is proof that you are not related.
And the "logic" behind that "thinking" is risible.
"Irreducible complexity" is the same as "I can't figure out how it happened so God must have done it!" As if the limits of one's intellect constrain reality. Talk about intellectual arrogance.
Clarifying the argument: It is not merely "I can't figure out how it happened". It is "If *I* can't figure it out, no one can, because I am the brainiest, wickedly smart, scientist ever to have walked on this planet".
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Well, to a creationist, the fact that there are no intermediaries between you and your parents is proof that you are not related.
To the religious fundamentalists, this is just more proof that Satan and his evil hoardes place false evidence to lure those whose faith is not solid away from Biblical truth.
Re:Damn... A win for the creationists (Score:5, Funny)
Well, to a creationist, the fact that there are no intermediaries between you and your parents is proof that you are not related.
To the religious fundamentalists, this is just more proof that Satan and his evil hoardes place false evidence to lure those whose faith is not solid away from Biblical truth.
It is not just Satan who is planting all those evil evidence. Satan is being actively aided and abetted by the Omnipotent who is *not* removing the false evidence as soon as Satan does the planting. It am sure the Omniscient All Knowing God is just testing the faithful to find out how strong their faith is, which He already knows, by definition.
Please give yourself a few minutes to let the brain return from that complex Yoga pose to return to normal.
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Hey now, the whole point of Yoga (originally at least) was to *gain* enlightenment. That line of reasoning is more like playing Twister with an octopus.
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That line of reasoning is more like playing Twister with an octopus.
Throw in some nudity and body oil and you've got some good Hentai.
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You've got it almost right...
Just like muscles need exercise to grow, so does faith.
Either that, or maybe he's trying to make a point?
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Faith is a 'slow grift' that much is true.
You can't get people to accept obvious nonsense until they are emotionally invested in slightly less obvious nonsense.
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BTW I don't believe creationists are the majority among the Christians or they speak for all Christians. But they do wield political power way out of proportion to their true numbers.
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The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred about 70,000 years ago, reducing the total human population to around 15,000 individuals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I know you are joking, but in a way it is a win for creationists. After 2.8 million years, we have under 8 billion people on earth. Statistical models just don't support it. You have creationists that believe there could have been more people on earth prior to the flood than there are now, in just 1656 years when the lifespan was ~900 years per person. My great great grandparents had 11 children that lived to adulthood, and my grandparents had 6...try running those numbers. At just 4 surviving children per parents, using 33 years per "generation", you easily hit 8 billion in 1000 years.
You mean that the best possible model is statistically significant? Wouldn't you think there is a higher possibility that the population growth is not exponentially at all times? Surely, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
Do read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You say that, but the faithheads won't be happy even with that. They'll probably just continue the "testing our faith" line, perhaps suggesting the devil put them there or something. Of course, they won't offer any proof for this but.. you know....look at my robes, hat.. come on...you can trust me.
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I just wish that there were more who were willing to be honest about it: "I'm a 6-day young earth creationist because I'm interested in faith, not empiricism." isn't my cup of tea; but I'm not interested in fighting with you about it. "No, no, empirical evidence actually proves creationism and a young ear
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True. At this point, I say 'Welcome aboard!' to any of them who decide that maybe trying science would be cool after all; but it's not even worth the effort to try to convert through additional evidence. I just wish that there were more who were willing to be honest about it: "I'm a 6-day young earth creationist because I'm interested in faith, not empiricism." isn't my cup of tea; but I'm not interested in fighting with you about it. "No, no, empirical evidence actually proves creationism and a young earth for reasons wholly aside from my interest in it doing so!!!" effectively assures arbitrary amounts of bullshit, intellectual dishonesty, and atrociously bad science standards. Not Good.
Perhaps that's one the god belief set is still so strongly entrenched in the face of mountains of contrary evidence.... their missionary conversion drive is so much stronger than ours.
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The next glaciation (ice age) has already been postponed indefinitely. It won't happen until atmospheric CO2 levels drop below 250 ppm again which is a long time in the future unless we start actively removing it.
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I've dealt with creationists in the past. Their main argument basically boiled down to "staying the same." They see the unchanging, religious answer of "God did it" as strong because the answer never changes. If you ask now or ten years from now, the answer would still be "God did it." Science, on the other hand, is constantly changing. We see it as a strength because science gets new information and changes theories based on this information. They see it as a weakness, though. Ask a scientist a ques
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This is what drives me up the wall too. I'm an atheist, with an academic background in the natural sciences, but I have zero interest trying to disabuse people of their sincerely held superstitions - especially I can't honestly claim to be a paragon of rationality most of the time. What offends me as a scientist (of sorts) is when people actively lie and distort the scientific evidence in support of their mythology. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
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And a marriage certificate.
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I'll need two fossils and the sex tape
And a marriage certificate.
Not to mention a USA birth certificate.
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and the sex tape
It's on a wall of the cave on the other side of the hill.
Re:So what's the new chain? (Score:5, Informative)
So far they're calling this an early H. habilis. That may change with further study or it may get a subspecies designator, but for now at least, it's H. habilis.
East Indies (Score:1)
From NPR: "Although it's risky to say you've done it first Christopher Columbus, is sure he and his team have found westward passage to India"
'Oh, yeah, it definitely is,' he says. 'We were looking for it — and by miraculous chance we happened to find it.'
Human origin (Score:5, Funny)
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This fossil comes from a long time ago in a region Afar away. Cue title scroll and John Williams music.
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Yes he did. Hence he goes around posting strawmen for others to knock down. Thinks it's clever.
Re:As if (Score:5, Informative)
Woman (Score:2, Funny)
Scientists believe the find is of a woman. When asked how they knew that, a spokesperson said "well, it was open".
Did the find the dinosaur bones he rode on? (Score:1)
I mean, I recently watched the video of the creation museum down south and they very explicitly state that humans and dinosaurs both co-habitated w/in the last 6,000 years, give or take a millennium. Cuz, you know, the Bible....
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I mean, I recently watched the video of the creation museum down south and they very explicitly state that humans and dinosaurs both co-habitated w/in the last 6,000 years, give or take a millennium. Cuz, you know, the Bible....
I recently saw some video series about Ancient Aliens. Cus, you know, the Bible.....
Guess we can't please everyone.
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On the other hand, humans and dinosaurs cohabit right now. I'm looking at a Cyanocitta cristata (bluejay) out my back window right now.
Yes, bluejays are dinosaurs, at least since they moved Aves into Dinosauria.
Which makes the fundies right for the wrong reasons. It would drive them even more crazy if you pointed out that birds evolved from dinosaurs, eh?
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My wife's parents own a cockatoo. That thing is definitely dinosaur. On a related note, the idea of a 10+ foot tall cockatoo is frightening!
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There is a fairly large population of feral turkeys near where I live and work - the adult males are slightly terrifying. Every time I see one I think of the dinosaurs who eat Wayne Knight in "Jurassic Park". Only with [more] feathers.
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I guess that means that humans have ridden on dinosaurs then. Wild ride on a big ostrich. [travelexplorations.com]
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Which is backed up by that documentary which clearly shows stone age families having a dinosaur as a pet and using various animals as household appliances. Apparently, they also loved saying "Yabba-Dabba-Doo."
Probably just another hoax! (Score:1)
Just another Piltdown Man or Peking Man or Nebraska Man.
"[B]y miraculous chance we happened to find it." Sure, and I got a rare Poloraoid of a T-rex eating one of the Geico cave men I can sell you for cheap.
Miraculous yes, scientific no.,, (Score:1)
"We were looking for it — and by miraculous chance we happened to find it."
Than you probably didn't find it. You created the result you desired. If you're conducting research science, and you got the result you want. You probably did "science" wrong!
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Satan has been around for a long time, he is wise, he knows how to use man's own hubris to condemn him
Surely, the writers of the paper will receive their earthly glory, but is it worth spending an eternity writhing in the lake of fire, I should say not.
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I'm not sure where I'm going after I die, but I'm glad I'm not going to the same place as the people who tell me I'm going to hell.
Mark Twain (para)
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English motherfucker! Do you speak it? (Score:2)
Than you probably didn't find it.
You did "english" wrong too!
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Archeology is more like looking for the lost TV remote... "We were looking for it — and by miraculous chance we happened to find it." after flipping the couch over and shaking it for the fifth time. These aren't result you make happen by not doing it right.
smells fishy (Score:1)
how come it's always human ancestors we find and never ape or some other primates ancestors?
this fact alone strikes me as funny. and not funny ha ha, funny.
you'd think that just once, somebody would stumble upon one by mistake if nothing else. guess there is no money/glory in that so they're all ancestors to man.
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Wow.
Stunning ignorance and arrogance (from someone who cannot find the shift key).
Excavations of the ancestor of other primate lineages are quite common.
All you have to do is type "primate fossils" in Google or Bing and be buried in links to same.
This theory gets muddied (Score:3)
every time "missing gap" is used to discuss/describe evolution. We will never find all relevant fossils. Most intermediate iterations were never fossilized in the first place. The "fossil record" can never be complete. All we can do with the infinitesimally small percentage of fossils we do discover is use them to confirm, or refute, the theory of evolution as it currently exists, and, perhaps, revise the theory as required to account for new discoveries and observations. Science!
Enjoy it now (Score:2)
Before ISIS bulldozes it.
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This is both hilarious and deeply depressing.
-1 = 2 (Score:1)
This jawbone came from Afar! (Score:1)
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