Anthropologists Doubt Ardi

Ardi’s skull obviously looked like this: Image: Science 326 (5949), (2 October 2009) from the article Gen Suwa, Berhane Asfaw, Reiko T. Kono, Daisuke Kubo, C. Owen Lovejoy and Tim D. White: The Ardipithecus ramidus Skull and Its Implications for Hominid Origins.

Joel Kontinen


In October 2009 the journal Science published several articles on a fossil discovered in Ethiopia. It was dubbed Ardi. According to its discoverers, Ardipithecus ramidus was a human ancestor that walked on two feet almost like us.

The find was severely criticized by other anthropologists. Alan Walker, a paleoanthropologist at Penn State, complained that “some portions of Ardi's skeleton were found crushed nearly to smithereens and needed extensive digital reconstruction.”

This naturally diminished Ardi’s credibility as a member of our human family.

Recently, Nature published a study that was very critical of Ardi’s status. Bernard Wood and Terry Harrison, who both are professors of anthropology, compared Ardi to other assumed hominids. They challenge the conclusions of the 2009 Science papers.

They conclude that Ardipithecus is an extinct hominid.

Wood and Harrison warn their colleagues of making too hasty interpretations of fossils. They remind us that scientists assumed that Ramapithecus, discovered in southern Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, was a human ancestor. However, they later found out that it was an ancestor of modern orangutans.

Oreopithecus bambolii, an ape found in Italy, also resembles human fossils to some extent, but studies have shown that it cannot be our ancestor.

According to Wood and Harrison, paleoanthropologists should carefully consider all possible options before they announce that a particular fossil is a human ancestor.

Although they do not rule out the possibility that Ardi might after all belong to the human family tree, they believe that the evidence shows that it is not a close relative of ours.

Creationists have always regarded Ardi as an extinct ape. While Nature’s criticism is a bit late, it is obviously better to set things straight now than to let readers think that scientists have at last found an apeman that walks to two feet.

Sources:

Fossils May Look Like Human Bones: Biological Anthropologists Question Claims for Human Ancestry. ScienceDaily (16 February).

Wood, Bernard and Terry Harrison. 2011. The evolutionary context of the first hominins. Nature 470 (7334): 347-352.

Goodbye, Ardi! Ardipithecus ramidus is becoming more apelike

Researchers are questioning the classification of Ardi. Image courtesy of Science via Time.com. © 2009, J. H. Matternes.




Joel Kontinen

When Science published Ardi last October amid great fanfare, some researchers already doubted the significance of the discovery.

This week brought Ardi or Ardipithecus ramidus down at least a notch or two. Science published two technical comments on the discovery. One of them challenges Ardi’s assumed environment and the other her place in the human lineage.

Primatologist Esteban Sarmiento criticises the way Tim White and colleagues, the discoverers of Ardi, compared her remains with the traits of other hominids. They classified Ardipithecus ramidus into the human lineage mainly on the basis of teeth – canines and premolars. Sarmiento says that this kind of comparison is very unreliable.

According to Sarmiento, Ardi is probably too old to fit into the human lineage.

In addition, Rex Dalton of Nature News suggested that Ardi might be more apelike than it was thought.

Sic transit gloria mundi.


Sources:

Dalton, Rex. 2010. Ardi may be more ape than human. Nature News 27 May http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100527/full/news.2010.267.html

Sarmiento, Esteban E. 2010. Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science 328: 5982, 1105. (28 May)

Much Ado About Ardi

The discovery of Ardipithecus ramidus, recently published in Science, changes man’s pedigree –once again. Image courtesy of Science via Time.com © 2009, J.H. Matternes.




Joel Kontinen

In Ardipithecus ramidus we have the second fossil to be touted as the discovery of the century this year. The first was the case of Ida or Darwinius masillae that turned out to be a flop.

Before Ida, we had the Hobbits or H. floresiensis. And during the dark ages, i.e. the 1970s, we all became acquainted with our grandmother Lucy a.k.a. Australopithecus afarensis.

According to Science, Ardipithecus ramidus, found in Afar in Ethiopia, is 4.4 million years old or 1.2 million years older than Lucy. Ardi is touted as the oldest hominid discovery of all time.

Putting together the fossil bones has been like trying to fit the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, as for instance the skull was badly crushed and it had to be put together from over 60 broken pieces that had spread over a large area.

Ardi was found in 1994. It took 15 years to reconstruct Ardi’s extremely fragile bones and put them together, which might say something about the speculative nature of the outcome.

Time.com. describes the condition of Ardi’s earthy remains, quoting Penn State paleoanthropologist Alan Walker:

"One problem is that some portions of Ardi's skeleton were found crushed nearly to smithereens and needed extensive digital reconstruction. 'Tim [White] showed me pictures of the pelvis in the ground, and it looked like an Irish stew,' says Walker."

It seems that the researchers’ basic assumptions decided which pieces they put where. While the bones were extremely fragile to the point of breaking apart in their hands, they nevertheless succeeded in putting together the remains of a female hominid estimated to be 47 in or 120 cm tall and weigh 50 kg.

Andrew Hill of the University of Yale says in a video released by Science that only four or five hominid fossils have been found. Most of our assumed ancestors are only known from skull fragments like in the case of Sahelanthropus, or from a few teeth or a bone or two.

What is obvious, however, is that evolutionists have been teaching a history of our past that is not true and man’s genealogical tree will have to be re-drawn. The discovery of Tim White and colleagues has awakened the Darwinists to realise that the assumed ancestor of man and the chimpanzee does not primarily look like a chimpanzee.

Hill disclosed that since very few chimpanzee and gorilla fossils have been found, researchers had not expected them to have changed considerably.

There is much less glory to be had in discovering a chimpanzee or gorilla ancestor than in getting a human forefather on the cover of a prestigious science journal. Perhaps for this reason few would even want to look for them.

Ardi has a typical ape’s foot, i.e. its big toe is sticking out sideways. Many evolutionists believe that Lucy or Australopithecus afarensis left the Laetoli footprints that do not considerably differ from those left by modern man although Lucy’s big toe most probably also stuck out sideways like Ardi’s. Ardi was definitely not able to leave such marks.

Dating old fossils is a game that is anything but precise since scientists will not date the fossils but rather the age of the place where they are found and since the methods include many assumptions. Thus, we cannot be certain whether Ardi really is the oldest hominid.

In addition, there is something suspicious in keeping extremely fragile fossil pieces out of the public eye for fifteen long years.

Sources:

Dalton, Rex. 2009. Oldest hominid skeleton revealed. Nature News. (1 October) http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091001/full/news.2009.966.html?s=news_rss

Science. 2009. Before “Lucy,” There Was “Ardi”: First Major Analysis of One of Earliest Known Hominids Published in Science.
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/1001sp_ardi.shtml

The Analysis of Ardipithecus ramidus--One of the Earliest Known Hominids. Science Video.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5949/60-b

Lemonick, Michael D. & Dorfman, Andrea. 2009. Ardi Is a New Piece for the Evolution Puzzle. Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1927200-2,00.html

Luskey, Casey. 2009. Bones of "Ardi," New Human Evolution Fossil, “Crushed Nearly to Smithereens”. Evolution news and views. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/key_bones_of_new_hominid_fossi.html#more

White, Tim D. 2009. Authors' Summary: Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. Science 326: 5949, 64, 75-86. (2 October).