Re: Africa's Eve is found to be an Adam

Stephen Jones (sjones@iinet.net.au)
Wed, 06 Dec 95 06:09:39 EST

Jim

On Mon, 27 Nov 95 12:58:39 MST you wrote:

>On Sun, 26 Nov 95 22:27:10 EST, ...Stephen Jones said:

SJ>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.

JF>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.

If the claim is sustained, then it is evidence that Darwinist
preconceptions have clouded scientists' minds for twenty years.

SJ>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?

JF>How could the sex of the fossil possibly affect how it fit
evolution?

It is the assumed dimorphism to explain Lucy's small size. As I said,
it turns Lucy from a "ladder" into a "bush".

SJ>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.

JF>40% complete actually, it comes to about 2/3rds if you take
>mirror-imaging into account.

OK. Thanks for this insight about "mirror-imaging". But arguably this
only makes it worse for evolution. The greater the evidence, the more
likely they should have got it right.

SJ>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.

JF>The correct designations are AL 288-1 and Sts 14.

The first is a typo. Sorry. Thanks for the second.

SJ>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.

JF>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.

Thanks for this info. It may now be that Lucy was just an ape, after
all and nothing to do with human evolution?

Regards.

Stephen

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