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The paper in next week's Nature presents yet more evidence best explained by a theory those responsible for presenting palaeontology to the lay world insist on hiding. Even if you start by assuming, as Patterson et al do, that some kind of human/chimp split occured 7mya, the molecules still end up telling us there was interbreeding 4my later. I'm not sure what the story would be if the 7my wasn't assumed; however we now know, at least those of us with any combination of reasonable scientific ability and honesty, that the chimps' line was right there on the hominid page with us, all the time. This time, there really is nowhere to run. If you think australopithecines were ancestral to us, some of them MUST have been ancestral to chimps, and definitely less than 4mya. A significant partial split followed by frequent interbreeding events strongly suggests semi-isolated populations of superficially rather similar types. Evidence for a semi-separation anything like the human/chimp one was not reported by the authors between any of the other types (Gorilla Orang Macaque). To this basic outline we now add the shading (again): There is no evidence on the hominin tree that I know of, stretching back to I don't know when, of anything that was predominantly quadrupedal. Oreopithecus was bipedal 12mya; modern chimps and gorillas have developed it recently and independently. Proconsul, who people assume to have been qudrupedal, is I believe represented by a single tooth. I don't think I'd call gibbons quadrupedal; it's just that their hands nearly touch the ground when they stand up. The chimp line evolved from something very like Lucy between 3 and 5mya, AND WAS ORIGINALLY BIPEDAL AND ALMOST CERTAINLY WENT THROUGH SOMETHING VERY CLOSE TO A. AFRICANUS. The gorilla line split off a million or something before that, AND WERE ORIGINALLY BIPEDAL AND ALMOST CERTAINLY WENT THROUGH SOME OF THE ROBUST AUSTRALOPITHECINES. That's the palaeoanthropology. Now the scientific method (yet again since many vertebrate palaeontologists learn very very slowly): The theory I repeat above is not only now the best because of new evidence. It always was the best. There never was any evidence for quadrupedality among our recent ancestors. No worthwhile statistician would ever accept the palaeoanthropologists' account that "we just haven't found any ancient chimps or gorillas". Any scientist who could say that and just quietly ignore the figures decade after decade and not treat it as one of the most important issues to be explained is not a true scientist. Similarly, the idea of chimps and gorillas suddenly appearing as the later australopthecines disappeared is another amazing idea that just shouldn't have been quietly accepted. These mistakes would never have happened had workers taken seriously the principle that the best theory is the one that best predicts or explains the observations. Not the theory that's been round the longest, nor the one you've nailed your reputation to, nor the one favoured by all the other morons who have floated to the top. Proper scientific judgement is what Popper said it is, and has been implicit in statistical process for a hundred years as well as being implicit in the operation of gene and neuron. It is not a butload of slogans such as "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (or we'd never cross the road), or "Extraordinary new theories require extraordinary new evidence" (no matter how nice Carl Sagan was, since that would only be true if all scientists interpreted evidence perfectly, which never could be true but needn't have been so lamentably untrue). I won't touch on the sociology behind the fraudulent palaeoanthropology except to say that ignoring those such as me because you don't like us, because we won't stop saying most of you are wrong, is not really worthy of a well brought up seven year old, let alone a scientific professional. Finally, the ideas that finally died this week are just one of a number of examples of irresponsible science at the heart of palaeobiology. Now how on earth will Gee and Hecht explain it all away this time?! :-> __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
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