Evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 09, 2009, 17:57 (5320 days ago) @ dhw

I'm not sure how excited we should be about Ardi, which my newspaper dubbed our "oldest ancestor" ... the same title that was given to Lucy, and will also be given to the next sensational discovery. I can well understand the thrill of the find, but can we really learn that much? -Yes we can.The presumption is that we would look more ape-like the further back we go, and we don't. -
 
> It's true that 4.4 million years takes us back a lot further than Lucy. But Ardi had a mummy and daddy, who by definition were also our ancestors, and didn't they have their ancestors, and they theirs, all the way back to Little Minnie Molecule? If Evolution is correct, all creatures have common ancestors, and no-one knows just where the paths separated.-Of course! But how did the paths separate? As a T with a right angle branch with anatomically little in common, or as a Y where the descendents have lots in common. - 
> Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, London, is quoted as saying: "The assumption among many researchers is that while humans have evolved a lot, chimps haven't changed much so we can use them as a model of the common ancestor we shared. But why shouldn't chimps have changed? Everything evolves. We are really trying to establish what set us off on our evolutionary path. -The assumption by researchers,quoted above, may be very wide of the mark. Perhaps chimps evolved from our line, not the other way around. See my previous entry with Matt pointing out fetal development comparing humans and chimps (all great apes)and in fetal development they branch off from us. (Oct. 8th, 21:46) Using the assumption that fetal development mimics evolution, leads to the reasoning that they branch from us in a "T" branching.-It is obvious that humans use tongue-in-cheek commentaries. I doubt that apes do. Another difference. And as Yogi Berra said, 'when coming to a fork in the road, take it'. The forks are nothing to 'spoon' over. They tell us a great deal about how evolution is driven.