>> Some will no doubt see the failure to detect that Lucy was a male
>> was more evidence of the need for caution in accepting claims in
>> Human Evolution, eg. "If they can't even get Lucy's sex right, how
>> can we be sure they have got other things right", etc, etc.
I too find this puzzling. Sex is meant to be easy to determine from a
pelvis. I would treat this claim cautiously until we get some comments
on it from other scientists. It's at least as possible that it's these
two scientists, and not everyone else, who have goofed up.
>> It could also be argued that Lucy was only assumed to be a female
>> because that fitted an evolutionary tree better? Another example of
>> evolutionary theory hindering, not helping, science?
How could the sex of the fossil possibly affect how it fit evolution?
>> =========================================================
>> Africa's Eve is found to be an Adam
>> By Graeme O'Neill
>> ---
>> Lucy's skeleton was about two-thirds complete - against the odds, the
>> body was overlooked by scavenging hyenas and lions and was buried
>> rapidly by volcanic ash in the Great Rift Valley before the elements
>> could disperse the bones.
40% complete actually, it comes to about 2/3rds if you take
mirror-imaging into account.
>> Lucy, designated by the serial number AL-288-I, is separated from S14
>> by almost the length of a continent and by several hundred thousand
>> years of evolution.
The correct designations are AL 288-1 and Sts 14.
>> The interval was long enough for S14's species to develop the largest
>> brain of any australopithecine around 580cc, compared with Lucy's
>> 350cc brain.
Lucy's skull was too incomplete to measure the brain. 350-400 cc is
probably a *very* rough ballpark figure. And no A.africanus (what Sts
14 is thought to belong to) has a brain size above 500 cc, that I've
heard of.
-- Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins, COJim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765 I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. -- Edmund Blackadder