open plain nonsense

The fact that other primates that went from forests to open plains, eg,
savanna baboons, had not lost their fur, had not developed large SC fat
tissues, and had become more quadrupedal rather than bipedal, was & still is
apparently of no concern for PAs favouring the ?quadrupedal = forest,
bipedal = open plain¹ model.

Whenever fossils of possible human relatives are found, the palaeo-fauna &
-flora tend to be viewed in light of the open plain interpretations, and
most interest therefore focuses on whether the landscape was open or
forested. The fact that aquatic taxa are prevalent at many sites (see work
of Stephen Munro) seems inconsequential, and these are usually only referred
to in scientific papers if they add something to the dating, stratigraphy or
taphonomy. This unbalanced focus can be explained by the implicit or
explicit conviction that the open plain or savannah view of human evolution
is beyond doubt, an attitude which is largely due to a combination of
educational biases & anthropocentrism. It is difficult to understand, eg,
that PAs rarely consider the obvious fact that what is true for other
animals (eg, ³all fat & naked mammals spend a lot of time in the water²)
might also be true for human ancestors.

A reconsideration of the usual PA models for human evolution without
anthropo-centric biases will open new insights into how our ancestors
evolved. The reconstruction of the evolutionary history of a living species
should be based in the first place on behavioural, anatomical &
physiological comparisons of the species to its extant relatives & to other
animal species, rather than on the interpretation of fossil finds. This is
primarily because making sense of the (usually patchy, incomplete &
scanty) fossil record strongly relies on interpretations, and it is never
certain whether the supposed ancestor was an evolutionary dead end or really
was an ancestor of a living species: we know we had ancestors, but we do not
know whether fossils have descendants. At the same time PAs need to
acknowledge how unlikely it is that human SC fat, furlessness, breath-hold
capacities & poor olfaction could have evolved because human ancestors lived
in dry, open habitats.
2 methods should be employed more frequently for future research into
reconstructions of how human ancestors may have lived:

(1) In describing the accompanying palaeo-flora & -fauna of a hominid site,
attention is often given to the larger mammals & animals that can be thought
to elucidate the supposedly savannah lifestyle of our ancestors. But the
invertebrate, fish, avian, reptilian & smaller mammal fauna should also be
studied in detail, and PAs should keep an open mind to the possibility that
not only the savannah itself, but the waterside, whether in the savannah or
not, might be an essential element in human & hominid evolution. It is true
that fossilisation in terrestrial settings mostly occurs in sedimentation in
quiet waters and that this alone by no means suggests that the animals
fossilised lived in these waters, but it is also the case that this does not
exclude the possibility that they might have spent more or less time in
these waters. All studies of the fauna associated with hominid
palaeoenvironments reveal that the aquatic components are often both
significant & considerable.

(2) PAs who construct models of the original human econiche tend to focus
on the fossil evidence. But while the fossil record can provide crucial
insights, its importance can also be overstated. Fossils are incomplete,
typically they are fragmented pieces of bone without soft parts, and their
exact phylogenetic relationship to living species is often uncertain.
Frequently, species, age & sex are unknown, and the geological age &
palaeo-environment uncertain. The comparative method, which compares the
behaviour, anatomy, physiology & DNA of living animals, is more secure,
systematic & reliable than the fossil evidence. Therefore, thorough
inventories & comparisons of the most diverse features of the
most diverse animals are needed in order to discover correlations between
these features.

_______




Op 06-05-2008 02:08, in artikel
b04ed304-eb6b-426b-b57d-4e7de84458e3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, nickname
<alas_my_loves@xxxxxxxxx> schreef:

On May 5, 4:54 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 5, 4:10 pm, nickname <alas_my_lo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On May 5, 3:55 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 5, 3:31 pm, nickname <alas_my_lo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 5, 3:23 pm, Rich Travsky <traRvE...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

nickname wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88aZ3jZAgYQ

Why does he need a full wet suit and googles? :-D

He doesn't. Would you backfloat naked in front of a video camera for
distribution on the internet? I wouldn't either.

Marc would.

Message-ID: <C4416909.11CF0%m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx>
Verhaegin: "Don't you take off your clothes when you go swimming??"

He wasn't talking about moviemaking, sorry hahahaleewood.

I thought Marc was in one of those Utube movies that Clark posted? The
swimming part ended up on the cutting room floor for obvious reasons.
Hardy har har.

stop imagining things ...

*MUTHU & INTERVIEWER - FINAL PART*

Interviewer : "Just imagine you're in the 20th floor of a building and
it's on fire. How will you escape?"

Muthu: "It's simple.. I will just stop my imagination. "



*****

.

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