Hi to my Forum Friends,
In the discussion titled "The Missing Link?" the Discovery Channel and NPR articles suggest that science may have found a fossil which "may have been" or "could be" or "should be" or "may well have been" or "is probably" -- the missing link between ape and man.
Don't you love it when science is so exact? And, they question the Bible?
The article also tells us: "Nobody's found it, and any who claim to usually get publicly whacked by their peers."
Below are excerpts from that article:
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'Mosaic' Fossil COULD BE Bridge From Apes To Humans
by Christopher Joyce, September 8, 2011
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/08/...mans?sc=fb&cc=fp
A pair of fossils from a South African cave have scientists both excited and puzzled. Scientists say the fossils — an adult female and a juvenile — could be the long-sought transition between ape-like ancestors and the first humans.
Sediba likely still used his hands for climbing in trees, but it was likely also capable of making the precision grips that we believe are necessary to make stone tools. - Tracy Kivell, paleoanthropologist, Max Planck Institute
The bones belong to creatures related to the famous Lucy fossil found in Ethiopia in the 1970s, but their owners lived more recently — just 2 million years ago.
The reason for the excitement? Ask anthropologists what they dream about, and many will tell you it's the fossil of the last pre-human ancestor that led directly to us. Nobody's found it, and any who claim to usually get publicly whacked by their peers.
Lucy and her kind — the diminutive, ape-like Australopithecus that lived 3.2 million years ago — may well have evolved into us, the genus Homo. But a lot happened in between Lucy and the earliest humans, who emerged just over 2 million years ago. The true "transitional" species must have lived about the time we emerged.
'The Best Candidate Ancestor'
Now, we have the South African fossils, dated at 1.9 million years ago. Called Australopithecus sediba, anthropologist Lee Berger says this could be the one. "In our opinion it's probably the best candidate ancestor for giving rise to our immediate ancestor," Berger says.
Rethinking How Humans Evolved
Direct ancestor or not, the weird jumble of primitive and modern traits in sediba could rewrite textbooks. Connected features, like the arm and the hand, are thought to evolve together. But sediba had an ape's arm and a more human-like hand.
It is believed our ancestors developed a roomy pelvis as their brains got bigger to deliver bigger-brained babies. The brain and pelvis supposedly evolved in lock-step. So why, asks Richmond, is sediba's pelvis big and roomy, but its brain small?
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Now, some might suggest that that last sentence in the excerpts above prove that the Australopithecus sediba was a direct ancestor of the atheists -- but, I will not go there. I am more inclined to believe that this story would be, could me, almost is -- the direct result of the mind set which is described in the popular Disney song: "When You Wish Upon A Star."
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you
If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do
Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true
So, my Friends, the long saga of Charley Darwin's enduring nightmare -- the "Missing Link" fossil continues. Of course, it will continue. For, there is no solution, there is no "Missing Link" to be found. It doesn't exist.
But, still, my atheist Friends, we all must have a dream -- and this is yours.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill