On Mon, 17 Feb 1997 22:44:12 -0500 (EST), Gordon Simons wrote:
SJ>It should be pointed out to newer Reflectorites that Gordie's
>"cousin's wife, Friderun Ankel-Simons" is the wife of noted
>anthropologist E.L. Simons, whose co-discovery of Ramapithecus was
>adversely affected as a human ancestor by the use molecular clock
>data:
GS>Thanks, Stephen, for the nice words. My cousin Elwyn is the
>famous Simons in the family. However, I should point out that he
>had nothing to do with "discovering" Ramapithecus. He tells me that
>he was four years old when the first suggestion was made that
>Ramapithecus was part of human lineage. His "co-discoverer," by
>your reckoning, Pilbeam, was Elwyn's student, and not yet born.
Thanks Gordie - I stand corrected. I assumed that E.L. Simons and D.
Pilbeam jointly discovered Ramapithecus, but it appears they merely
championed it as a human ancestor:
"David Pilbeam, formerly of Yale and now at Harvard University, Elwyn
Simons, now of Duke University, two of the leading
paleoanthropologists in the U.S., and others had in recent years
strongly championed Ramapithecus as an early hominid, a creature in
the direct line leading to man. (Simons E. L., Ann. N. Y. Acad. of
Sci, 1969, 167:319; Simons E. L., Sci. Amer, 1964,. 211(1):50;
Pilbeam D. R., Nature, 1968, 219:1335; Simons E. L. & Pilbeam D. R.,
Science, 1971, 173:23). During that time it was frequently stated in
the anthropological literature and textbooks that there was general
agreement that Ramapithecus and related fossils (referred to as
ramapithecids) were ancestral to all true hominids, including Man.
Today, in the light of additional material that has been discovered,
most anthropologists have discarded Ramapithecus as a hominid. He is
no longer considered to have been a creature in the line leading to
man." (Gish D.T., "Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record",
1986, p140)
GS>It was interesting to read Richard Leakey's account that you sent
>along:
SJ>"The debate raged for more than a decade, during which time more
>and more molecular evidence was produced by Wilson and Sarich and
>also independently by other researchers. The great majority of these
>new data supported Wilson and Sarich's original contention. The
>weight of this evidence began to shift anthropological opinion, but
>the change was slow. Finally, in the early 1980s, discoveries of
>much more complete specimens of Ramapithecus-like fossils, by Pilbeam
>and his team in Pakistan and by Peter Andrews, of London's Natural
>History Museum, and his colleagues in Turkey, settled the issue (see
>figure 1.1). The original Ramapithecus fossils are indeed human-
>like in some ways, but the species was not human..." (Leakey R.,
>"The Origin of Humankind", Phoenix: London, 1994, pp7-8)
GS>For fun, I gave Elwyn a call, for comments, and got a fairly
>different reading on this part of anthropological history.
This is what I *really* like about the Reflector - its ruthless
punishment of error. If I say something wrong about a famous
scientist, his cousin rings him up to set me right! :-)
GS>Since we spoke for over an hour, I will not try to summarize what
>he said. But it seems pretty clear that the real killer of the
>human-lineage suggestion was not molecular-clock data, as Leakey
>suggests, but better fossil data.
Agreed. That's what Leakey says above:
"The more complete specimens from Pakistan and Turkey revealed that
the putative humanlike features were superficial."
But the molecular data was the first to raise doubts about
Ramapithecus' hominid status and had already convinced some
paleoanthropologists. Here's a long quote by Edey & Johanson that I
couldn't shorten further:
"The idea that humans and apes were separated in their evolution for
fifteen or twenty million years has for several decades been one of the
linchpins of paleoanthropology. Elwyn Simons and David Pilbeam
have devoted their professional careers to the development of that
concept. As all the Miocene apes were sorted out under Pilbeam's
careful hand, they seemed to fall more and more logically into two
groups: those whose traits verged toward the traits that modern apes
show, and those that verged toward humanness. One powerful bit of
fossil evidence that identified humanness in one ape was the
previously mentioned Ramapithecus half-jaw that Elwyn Simons had
turned into a complete jaw by casting a mirror image of the half he
had and fitting the two together. The result was a curved "human"
tooth row. Ramapithecus, on that evidence and in default of a better
candidate, emerged as the most manlike of all the Miocene apes and
was cast in the role of human ancestor From the size of its jaw a
rough size estimate for the entire animal could be derived; it stood
about three feet tall. Little else was known about it. There were no
postcranial bones to say whether it walked upright or not, or what
kind of hand or foot it had. Whether it was arboreal or terrestrial was
not known. It bore a suspiciously close resemblance to another
slightly larger ape, Sivapithecus, which occurred in the same places
and at the same time. But Sivapithecus had the boxlike tooth row of
an ape and was considered not to be on the human line. All the other
Miocene apes were either older and possibly ancestors to
Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus, or else were considered to be more
apelike. In 1967 a young biochemist, Vincent Sarich of the University
of California, Berkeley, announced that that scenario was all wrong.
He had been comparing samples of the blood protein serum albumin-
of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans, and his tests told him that the
three had a common ancestor as recently as five million years ago. To
paleoanthropologists that was a preposterous figure. Still more
preposterous was Sarich's contention that the two apes and the
human stood in triangular relationship with each other: man was as
closely related to the chimp as the chimp was to the gorilla. Could
any paleoanthropologist, familiar with Pilbeam's work and bound to
the old dates that were clamped to that work, believe that? Could he
suddenly look over his shoulder and see chimp and gorilla looming so
closely in a brotherly relationship with him? Not possibly; everything
known about the bones and about geology said fifteen or twenty
million years, not five. Nobody paid attention to Sarich. Almost
nobody. A few did, notably Sherwood Washburn, also of California-
Berkeley. Washburn is one of the most distinguished primatologists in
the country.
...Although paleontologists continued to ignore the molecular
evidence for nearly twenty years, that became increasingly difficult to
do as more, and increasingly more precise, ways were developed for
measuring molecular differences...
[Sarich]...was deeply outraged at the dismissal of his work, and is
today. "It continues to annoy me in the extreme," he said recently, "to
see that contribution trivialized by ignoring it." The first crack in the
trivialization came not-as Sarich would have liked from his own
work, but from fossils. During the 1970s several experts, taking a
second look at the famous reconstructed Ramapithecus jaw, began to
wonder if Elwyn Simons had put it together right. Put together
differently, the tooth row came out like those of other Miocene apes,
and not curved as in humans. Simons's reaction was to assert that the
new reconstructors didn't know what they were doing and had made
a number of fundamental mistakes. Then, in 1976, a larger part of a
Ramapithecus jaw than anything previously known was found in
Pakistan. Matching it with other fragments from the same site
produced the first really good look at Ramapithecus that science had
ever had. After a careful examination of it, Pilbeam was forced to
conclude that it could not be pegged as more probably the ancestor of
either a modern ape or a modern man. His fixation on Ramapithecus
as the human ancestor, and particularly as the old human ancestor,
began to crumble. It crumbled further when two enormously exciting
fossil finds were reported in 1980 and 1982. The first was from
Turkey. The second was from Pakistan and, of all things, was turned
up by Pilbeam's own field team."
(Edey M.A. & Johanson D.C., "Blueprints", 1989, pp354-355,364)
GS>Please permit me a small, somewhat amusing, anecdote:
>
>I visited Elwyn many years ago when he was on the faculty at Yale. (He is
>now at Duke.) Elwyn introduced me to Pilbeam, at work in his research lab.
>With some prompting from Elwyn, he was induced to make his way over to a
>specimen drawer to pull out what was then the best Ramapithecus fossil in
>the world - perhaps 6 million years old - as I recall, a couple of teeth,
>still within a small fragment of jaw - and highly prized. Elwyn discussed
>it and handed it to me for my inspection. As we became involved in further
>conversation, I continued to hold it. While Elwyn was perfectly relaxed,
>I can still remember Pilbeam's nervous and watchful eye on that stranger
>in his mist who held the "crown jewels." Such is the importance of fossil
>data in his field.
Indeed, Lubenow claims that they are mostly plaster casts:
"Although I have visited most of the major natural history museums in
the United States and some overseas, I have never seen an original
human fossil. Neither have most of the anthropologists who teach
human evolution in our universities. Neither have you. In fact, you
may not have seen even a picture of an original fossil. What you
thought were pictures of original fossils may have been pictures of
casts. No prisoner on death row is under greater security than those
ancient relics called human fossils. Most of the original fossils
are sequestered inside vaults of concrete or stone, accessible only
through massive steel doors-the type you would expect to see at First
National Bank. " (Lubenow M.L., "Bones of Contention", 1992,
pp11-13)
GS>One final point: Elwyn assures me that no suggestion was ever made
>that Ramapithecus was bipedal.
Maybe not by him, but certainly by others:
"Although there is no fossil evidence from which to determine the
posture of Ramapithecus, the fact that Australopithecus was already
completely adapted for upright posture suggests that the transition
from fourlegged to two- legged stance must have taken place at an
earlier time; this hypothesis suggests that Ramapithecus may have
made the transition, and it is therefore possible that Ramapithecus
walked erect." ("Ramapithecus", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984,
viii:403)
"Because of its small front teeth, the hominid probably depended on
having free upper limbs for defence and hunting. The teeth of these
various groups are illustrated in figure 10. It is therefore a reasonable
deduction from this that it normally stood upright, and walked and
ran on two hind limbs. Ramapithecus is the oldest known member of
the Hominidae, and may be the form of primate in the ancestral
lineage of both the Australopithecus and Homo." (Allbrook D.B.,
"The Evolution of Man: Part I-Origins of Man", Jacaranda Press:
Queensland, 1975 reprint, p28)
"Ramapithecus was probably an erect biped, from the reduction in size
of the incisors and canines we may infer that the forelimbs had taken
over tasks the front teeth perform among the Pongiciae-the grasping
and tearing up of vegetation. It is quite an imaginative jump from
data to inference-from the size of a few-teeth to a statement that an
animal was an erect biped-but the jump is justifiable."
(Buettner-Janusch J., "Physical Anthropology: A Perspective", 1973,
p223)
"In fact, the "entire Ramapithecus, walking upright, has been
'reconstructed' from only jaws and teeth. In 1961, an ancestral
human was badly wanted. [Ramapithecus] latched onto the position by
his teeth, and has been hanging on ever since...." " (Zihlman A. &
Lowenstein J., "False Start of the Human Parade", Natural History.
Aug. 1979, p89, in Bird W. R., "The Origin of Species Revisited",
Vol. I, 1991, p230)
I have have before me a 3-page colour spead by leading
paleoanthropologist F. Clark Howell in his book "Early Man",
(Time/Life Books, 1969, p42), which clearly shows Ramapithecus
upright and walking in an ascending series from Dryopithecus to
Modern Man.
God bless.
Steve
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