Re: fossil relative of gorilla found (Re: aquarboreal ape fossil found (Re: "Lucy's Baby": pre-human fossil dazzles scientists

I top posted. The nice thing about Marc is he can repeat what somebody else
said except he totally misses that they already made every point he is
repeating and they said this was pretty much a chimp in some articles and in
at least one they bluntly said that it was best seen a chimp analog that
walked on its hind legs.


"Marc Verhaegen" <fa204466@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:451310b6$0$28402$ba620e4c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Gerrit Hanenburg" <G.Hanenburg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4ng5h25lrlvr6db73f19fp1au5189r2snb@xxxxxxxxxx
"Marc Verhaegen" <fa204466@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Lucy's Baby": pre-human fossil dazzles scientists
Human-like below the waist, ape-like above, an ancient child is
galvanizing the study of our origins.

"Pre-ape fossil" they mean?

Don't think so.

Yes, they do mean "pre-human", but it's obvious they're following the
usual
anthropocentric interpretations. It's understandable that fossil hunters
prefer to find human rather than ape ancestors, but have a good look at
the
data & illustrations of the paper: there's nothing human in this afarensis
child: no long legs, no big brain, no external nose. The few features the
authors believe to be human are primitive features: as so often, the
authors
confuse "apelike" & "primitive": in many instances, Afr.apes have more
primitive features than humans, but in some features (eg, 2-leggedness)
humans are more primitive. The child had curved phalanges for climbing.
Apelike tongue bone. Apelike labyrinth. Probably large laryngeal
airsacs.
Small brain. Short legs. Gorilla-like scapula. Frequent use of arms
overhead. Etc. As we deduced from comparative data, this species, like
other early hominids (sensu relatives of chimps, humans & gorillas), might
well have waded on 2 legs in & near swamps, feeding mostly on plant foods,
climbing trees arms overhead, perhaps even parttime KWing as the authors
have to admit: "Now that the scapula of this species can be examined in
full
for the first time, it is unexpected to find the strongest similarities
with
Gorilla, an animal in which weight-bearing and terrestrial knuckle-walking
predominately characterize locomotor use of the forelimbs33. Problematic
in
the interpretation of these findings is that the diversity of scapula
architecture among hominoid species is poorly understood from a functional
perspective." Nothing "unexpected" nor "problematic", to the contrary:
- 1994 "Australopithecines: ancestors of the African apes?" Human
Evolution
9:121-139
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Fil/Verhaegen_Human_Evolution.html
- with P-F.Puech & Stephen Munro 2002 "Aquarboreal ancestors?" Trends in
Ecology & Evolution 17: 212-7 (can also be found in the AAT or AAT1
files).


AFAICS there's nothing uniquely human in it: no large brain, no long
legs,
no external nose...

How about the characters related to bipedalism, the most
distinguishing feature of the human clade?

Distinguishing?? :-D Frequent walking (wading IMO) on 2 (rel.short)
legs
very likely predates the H/P & even the HP/G split.

Apelike skull, small brain, curved phalanges for arm-hanging...
Fossil-hunters see everywhere human ancestors, no wonder they claim no
ape
ancestors have been found yet.

http://www.world-science.net

Thanks a lot, Nebula.
As all other apith fossils found in shallow water, wetlands, river
delta,
lakeside...

Laetoli? Gerrit

Yes. As you know, nothing in Laetoli contradicts that apiths were
herbivores in wetlands, lakesides etc., as we argue on comparative
grounds:
"Were australopiths wetland waders? - Our extensive survey of the
literature17 suggests that most hominids might have dwelt in 'wet' rather
than 'dry' habitats, and this has been confirmed by recent
discoveries14,18,19. Palaeo-ecological reconstructions are notoriously
difficult and our view has been contested by supporters of traditional
savannah interpretations1-3,17,19, yet it appears clear that all
australopiths lived near trees, with early species generally living in wet
and well-wooded environments and later species living more often in more
open wetlands. Table 2 shows a limited selection of our data. Our
interpretation is corroborated by (1) comparisons of postcranial skeleton,
(2) tooth enamel microwear, (3) strontium:calcium ratios and (4) isotopic
evidence. (1) Fossilized footprints and skeletal remains suggest that
australopiths had a mixture of bipedal, tree-climbing and probably20
knuckle-walking features. These would have been ideal for wetlands:
bipedalism in waist-deep water, knuckle-walking in knee-deep water, and
grasping fruits and climbing arms-overhead in the waterside vegetation, as
seen today to varying degrees in pygmy chimpanzees and lowland gorillas in
flooded rainforests or forest swamps15. Australopith short-legged
bipedalism
was different from human bipedalism21, probably including a somewhat
forward-leaning trunk posture22, and would have been suitable for
aquarborealism. The A.africanus StW-573 foot from Sterkfontein, South
Africa, for instance, "had both bipedal and climbing adaptations. This
skeleton's foot morphology is consistent with the bipedal Laetoli
footprints, which are not those of fully human feet, but which have very
clear ape-like morphology"23. Tree-climbing features (which are less
obvious
in the robust australopiths) include apelike upward-directed shoulder
joints
and curved finger and toe phalanges. ..." (TREE 17:212-7, 2002).

--Marc Verhaegen
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT




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