Fossils challenge old evolution theory

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Wed Aug 8, 2007

WASHINGTON - Surprising research based on two African fossils suggests our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, (With a bunch of supposed branches leading to no where.) challenging what had been common thinking on how early humans evolved.

The discovery by Meave Leakey, a member of a famous family of paleontologists, shows that two species of early human ancestors lived at the same time in Kenya. That pokes holes in the chief theory of man's early evolution — that one of those species evolved from the other.

And it further discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a briefcase-carrying man.

The old theory is that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became human, Homo sapiens. But Leakey's find suggests those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years. She and her research colleagues report the discovery in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The paper is based on fossilized bones found in 2000. The complete skull of Homo erectus was found within walking distance of an upper jaw of Homo habilis, and both dated from the same general time period. That makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis, researchers said.

It's the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London.

The two species lived near each other, but probably didn't interact, each having its own "ecological niche," (Speaking of them as apes and animals not as humans) Spoor said. Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian while Homo erectus ate some meat, he said. Like chimps and apes, "they'd just avoid each other, they don't feel comfortable in each other's company," he said.

There remains some still-undiscovered common ancestor that probably lived 2 million to 3 million years ago, a time that has not left much fossil record, Spoor said.

Overall what it paints for human evolution is a "chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and eventually unto us," Spoor said in a phone interview from a field office of the Koobi Fora Research Project in northern Kenya.

That old evolutionary cartoon, while popular with the general public, is just too simple and keeps getting revised, said Bill Kimbel, who praised the latest findings. He is science director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and wasn't part of the Leakey team.

"The more we know, the more complex the story gets," he said. Scientists used to think Homo sapiens evolved from Neanderthals, he said. But now we know that both species lived during the same time period and that we did not come from Neanderthals.

Now a similar discovery applies further back in time. --

-- Leakey's team spent seven years analyzing the fossils before announcing it was time to redraw the family tree — and rethink other ideas about human evolutionary history. That's especially true of most immediate ancestor, Homo erectus.

Because the Homo erectus skull Leakey recovered was much smaller than others, scientists had to first prove that it was erectus and not another species nor a genetic freak. The jaw, probably from an 18- or 19-year-old female, was adult and showed no signs of malformation or genetic mutations, Spoor said. The scientists also know it isn't Homo habilis from several distinct features on the jaw.

That caused researchers to re-examine the 30 other erectus skulls they have and the dozens of partial fossils. They realized that the females of that species are much smaller than the males — something different from modern man, but similar to other animals, said Anton. Scientists hadn't looked carefully enough before to see that there was a distinct difference in males and females.

-- Species that are not monogamous, such as gorillas and baboons, have much bigger males.

This suggests that our ancestor Homo erectus reproduced with multiple partners. (Kind of a jump, – or perhaps it more likely indicates that these are not men but some species of apes and gorillas as Australopithecines was found to be a giant knuckle walking ape with living related species still living on the earth in Asia)

The Homo habilis jaw was dated at 1.44 million years ago. That is the youngest ever found from a species that scientists originally figured died off somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million years ago, Spoor said. It enabled scientists to say that Homo erectus and Homo habilis lived at the same time.

In the end Evolution is too important a doctrine to secular humanists atheists and their ilk so it can never, never be allowed to fall.

So it appears from this article that it has been conclusively proven over and over that men are unique and did not come from any of these species whatsoever. And this has been shamelessly hidden by the cult of the evolutionists and hidden and shrouded and masked in all this talk of us and monkeys and apes and even gorillas being from the same family, and under this made up umbrella due much to looks that somehow we are all indeed related. In this article it is stated by as much as the scientific community will allow that Man is unique and does not come from any other species.

The telltale remark that shows that they see there has been no evolution with men – is that: This does not affect any of the evolution doctrine in regard to animal species.

When such a bold secondary line is drawn it indicates that the first and primary defenses have fallen and have been abandoned. -- So now evolution is left to the lower species where it is declared that creationists will find it all the harder (In their corrupt view) to disprove evolution. –

However this is not at all so -- for these evolutionists have never been able to prove or make their case except by lining up unrelated species and building these false ladders or marches from something old to what we now see.

And all we need to do is to return to these evolutionary charts from the 1940’s used the world over which depicted 6 or more species of unrelated animals to show the evolution of the modern horse -- which was completely discredited as far back as the 1970’s. So that these modern species are unique to the ancient species that were trotted out if for no reason other than the rib counts – and that these species are the bush or horse species most of which have passed away over time.