No. There are a couple of potential common ancestors for all the African apes, but none for the common human/choimp ancestor.
There are different theories about exactly which of the ancient hominids we are descended from, though there are certainly fossils of many potential candidates. It’s hard to put these into precise order of ancestry, so I don’t know of any definitive chimp-man splitting point. Part of the problem is that there are so many ‘intermediate forms’ that could be ancestors.
Please note, the term ‘intermediate form’ is inappropriate as it implies that these creatures were nothing more than stepping stones on the way to ‘man’ and ‘chimp’.
Take a look at this site about the hominidae and their possible subfamily, the homininae.
Good old wikipedia! I note with interest the problem of deciding whether certain fossil remains belong to a human ancestor or to a gorilla.
Just for the record, bodswood, the case for evolution does not rest on the fossil record. We can prove evolution without a single fossil.
Fossils help, of course, but they are not a sine qua non for evolutionary theory.
You should also know that the conditions for fossilization to occur are relatively rare, so we don’t expect to be able to find a complete record. It’s rather lucky that we have anything at all.
Bodswood, there’s been six pages of information so far. Are you convinced of the fact of evolution, and that the theory of evolution is the best way to explain it? If not, why not?
First off, I don’t believe evolution, Darwinian evolution, is a fact. The reasons for doubting the theory, or theories, centre on the problems of observation and the concatenation of chance changes.
It just seems more plausible to believe that a perfectly disguised stick insect, for example, started out that way than ending up that way after a series of thousands (millions? billions?) of chance mutations. The truth seems literally to be staring us in the face.
Surely one cannot be mad to believe this, given the weakness of the countervailing evidence?
We don’t have good fossils from that critical time period before the human and chimp line divereged. There isn’t a fossil we can point to and say: this is the common ancestor of humans and chimps. As for chimp fossils, they’re pretty sparse, too. Mainly this is because typical chimp habitat (forests with lots of rain) is not good for fossilization, but also there are many, many more scientist out digging for hominid bones than digging for chimp-ancestor bones.
What do you think of Neanderthals? There are so many good skeleton of Neanderthals and they are clearly something very different from us. Close, but distinctly different. DNA studies on what little Neanderthal DNA has been found puts them well outside the normal range of genetic variation of modern human populations.
As has been pointed out many, many times in this thread, there is evolution, and there is the theory of evolution. Species die off, new species appear. This is evolution and this has been observed. You can’t “not believe it”.
I think you have no intention of ever learning about evolutionary theory. You pay no attention to the many posters taking the time to reply, and make the same moronic misrepresentations about evolution over and over again. You ask for evidence about human ancestry, and when it is given to you the only thing you comment on is the difficulty of telling the difference between a proto-human skeleton and an ape.
I believe you came in here just to poke fun at evolution and your “I want to learn” statements are mere pretence. You are intellectually dishonest, and I have no interest in continuing this ‘conversation’.
Not mad, just uninformed.
What exactly is “weak” about the “counterveiling evidence?” Be specific. You haven’t actually offered any rebuttals to the tons of evidence offered to you in this thread and some of the excellent links provided to you. If you can still say with a straight face that the evidence is weak then I have to either doubt that you’ve truly read the evidence, that you truly understand it (no crime there, believe me. It’s not easy stuff to grasp, necessarily. That’s why it’s so easy for creationist pseudo-science to make a living off the ignornt) or you’re not really interested in an honest debate.
To go back to the question in your OP, what part of evolutionary theory do you contend relies on faith rather than observation?
Science is not about what conclusion one might find more plausible, but about what observation and data tells us. There is no observation or data that tells us that a given life form “started out that way”.
You keep saying this. The evidence for evolution is OVERWHELMING. Which is why it is a scientific fact, and not just some hypothesis. What evidence do you have for a creationist explaination? I don’t believe there is even on single piece of evidence. None. Once again, creationism is not science. I’ve asked you several times before: Please explain to us how creationism is science, since you seem to think it is. Describle to us how one goes about verifying creationism using the scientific method.
John, one of the major problems to me with fossilised remains is that there’s not a great deal of it and the specimens are often so fragmentary and inconclusive. The fact that the data is so limited means that interpretations are perhaps overly influenced by the theories that scientists bring to their studies.
Any fossilised remains that have been reconstructed need to be treated with great caution.
Re Neanderthals, in particular, recent research seems to suggest that they are not our ancestors.
Bodswood,
Neanderthals are not our ancestors. No evidence pertains to that. Most likely they were another race that was outcompeted by early man. Hence the previous statement about how their DNA is outside the range of genetic variance from man.
Precisely, but it wasn’t so long ago that there was speculation that we could be descended from them.
On the contrary, there is tons of it, boatloads of it, scads of it.
Even fragments can provide conclusive information. It doesn’t take much of a sample to extract mitochondrial DNA, for example and we have large amounts of samples which are relatively intact, or at least intact enough to provide useful information. Hominid skulls, for instance, tell us plenty.
This is just flat out wrong. The data is not so “limited” and scientists do not bring prejudicial “influences” into the study. The evidence is what it is and if one scientist gets something wrong, other scientists will figure it out. Scientific conclusions do not rely on wishes or personal bias.
They most assuredly are.
All of this is rather academic anyway in light of the fact that (as I said before) we don’t need fossils to prove evolution.
Who said they were our ancestors?
What’s interesting about Neanderthals is that they were another homonid species who possessed something akin to human intelligence complete with elements of culture, even religion, yet they were not humans and we are not descended from them. This proves that humans are not the only sapient species which has ever existed on earth. I find that fascinating.
From a creationist standpoint, what the hell were Neanderthals doing here? Did they have souls? Did they have free will? Why doesn’t the Bible say anything about them?
So what?
And, what? Science has progressed and we have moved on with better information.
There hasn’t been a question about whether evolution was the unifying explaination for biology for 100 years. Details will continue to be worked out thanks to new finds, DNA, and other lines of research, but that’s just details.
It may seem to be a major obstacle to accepting evolution as fact, but it really isn’t. It’s more like trying to plan a drive from Boston to Seattle along I-90; the fact that you don’t have a map for the exact route the highway takes through South Dakota wouldn’t make you doubt that you could drive all the way.
You’ve only had a few days. Give it time
Plausible depending on what prejudices you bring to consideration of the evidence. If you take an educated rather than naive observation of the evidence what you propose is totally implausible.
However you’ve also made the common ID/Creationist error of believing that the evolution of species is somehow directed to particular ends. That’s the wrong mechanism. The right mechanism is natural selection.
Were it weak the belief might be sane. The countervailing evidence is overwhelming. The supporting evidence; insubstantial fancy.
I live in HK.
“However you’ve also made the common ID/Creationist error of believing that the evolution of species is somehow directed to particular ends. That’s the wrong mechanism. The right mechanism is natural selection.”
But it is remarkable, is it not, that such ends are reached. For every stick insect that selected for green, and a stickish shape, are we to imagine literally millions that selected for orange, red, etc. and various other shapes? I assume so.
If you live in Hong Kong too, then perhaps we have met.
Why do you say there isn’t a great deal of it? Just for human ancestors alone, there are hundreds of specimens. And there are quite a few very well preserved skeletons. Check out the famous Nariokatome skeleton, for example. Would you call this “fragmentary”? It represents a Homo erectus boy who lived about 1.6M years ago.
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Any fossilised remains that have been reconstructed need to be treated with great caution.
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True. Do you have evidence that a significant number haven’t been?
I didn’t mean to imply that they were. But we have so many fossils of that particular species, that it has to give a creationist pause-- there once was an entire species similar to us, but also very different. Where did these guys come from and where did they go? That’s evolution, staring you in the face.
No, it just means that any random mutation which gave an insect an incrementally greater chance of escaping detection from predators until it could produce was selected for. Other changes built on previous changes. It got “greener” and “stickier” over time until it had adapted into its current form.
“Selection” just means any kind of trait that allows a better chance for an individual to reproduce, The species doesn’t do the “selecting,” death does. Whatever doesn’t die before it reproduces passes its traits to its offspring. I’m not sure why you would think an insect species would pop up in other randomly incongruous forms and colors. No single mutation would be very dramatic in itself. You would not see radically different colors and shapes of stick bugs, only stick bugs which gradually looked more and more like their environments over the course of millions of generations.