Re: Faithful Ancestors was Re: Doesn't ANYONE have anything new to say?

Lorenzo L. Love wrote:
> rmacfarl wrote:
....
> >>>Firstly, I don't understand how you deduce from the article that
> >>>Lovejoy's methodology was any less arbitrary than Plavcan's or
> >>>McHenry's.
> >
> >
> > Comment?
>
> Lovejoy used the only one place one time data set we have, the First
> Family. Plavcan rejected the First Family as it didn't meet his
> preconceptions.

Good answer.
....

> >
> > A 6-foot-4 woman is a bit more than "just outside the edges of the bell
> > curve".
> > ...
>
> So you are saying Gabriele Reese is pathological?

I'm not saying she's "diseased", but I am saying she's abnormal. Women
of her stature (actually I had no idea who she was; that's why I
referred to Lauren Jackson) don't occur once in every 22 individuals,
or even in every 220. A 6'4" female is more than 3 standard deviations
away from the mean in pretty much any modern human population.

I'm also saying that in most wild populations, those who deviate
significantly from the norm, in size or colouration or whatever, tend
to survive &/or breed poorly. Average size of individuals within a
population is controlled by natural selection.

Probabibility suggests that if you had the same bone from, say, 10
adult individuals from a single population, the 3 largest would most
probably be male, & the 3 smallest most probably female. The 4 in the
middle might be too close to call, or might be easy to pick if there's
strong dimorphism.
....

> >>Note that Plavcan didn't like the data he got from the First Family so
> >>he threw them out and used other specimens. Not from a single moment in
> >>time and only seven individuals.
> >
> >
> > Hmm...
>
> Comment?

If Plavcan's analysis wasn't based on the First Family, then that lends
weight to your opinion. I'm not convinced, but your arguments are good.
:-)

I do find it interesting that there was sufficient variation within the
First Family for early researchers to assign the fossils to 2 different
species baed on size variation. And I remain unconvinced about Lovejoy
& food-sharing - it's way too anthropomorphic for mine.

What did White's original study show? Did the fossils fall into
distinct groups, or was there a continuum of sizes and morphological
features? Per Jason's comment, is it right that there's no obvious
distinction between, say, dentition, that could distinguish male &
female (or different species)?

Ross Macfarlane

.