On Wed, 6 Dec 95 10:03:09 MST you wrote:
>On Wed, 06 Dec 95 06:43:49 EST...Stephen Jones said:
[...]
SJ>Thanks for this info. It may now be that Lucy was just an ape,
after
>all and nothing to do with human evolution?
JF>Except that the pelvis is surprisingly humanlike (if you want to
check,
>see "Lucy's child" for a photo of the pelvises of a chimp, human and
>Lucy). The teeth of A.afarensis are also somewhat humanlike (less so
>than those of A.africanus, but quite a bit more so than those of chimps.
>See "Lucy" for pictures). Doesn't that sound like a "transitional
>form"?
I do not disagree that Lucy may be a "transitional form". If it is
ultimately proved that man has a common genetic ancestry with apes,
Australopithecines, and Homo erectus, then I would see that as the
process by which "God formed man of the dust of the ground" (Gn 2:7).
OTOH, Lucy might just be an interesting variety of extinct ape! :-)
My real point was the tentative nature of paleoanthropological
interpretations. Zuckerman has compared much of it to
"parapsychology" and pointed out that *every* fossil remotely
resembling humans has been claimed as a human ancestor, thus
guaranteeing instant fame, and perhaps fortune.
In the end, as Johnson points out in DOT and RITB, much of it is
just modern materialistic society's creation myth, as a substitute
for the real thing! :-)
Regards.
Stephen
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