Ardi, who knew? THe Religious nuts got it right

[nadinbrzezinski]

Humans did NOT evolve from Chimps... but from a common ancestor.

They were right, but not for the reasons they thought.

I am sure those who love science round these parts will find the irony of this...

[Oregone]

1. I don't get it

Wasn't the majority arguments immediately prior to this discovery about a common ancestor? Thats what I always had the impression of, but maybe I was wrong.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Darwin's argument was that man evolved from a chimp like creature

and that was the assumption for over a hundred years since we are that close genetically to chimps, as well as behavior.

Somewhere about 4.7 million years ago both groups evolved apart from a common ancestor. No chimps.

So we can tell them... hey you guys YOU GOT THIS ONE RIGHT, but for the wrong reasons.

[truedelphi]

17. Many Native Americans have said this for a very long time

And I always thought they probably were right. Now I can say it without people thinking the RW religious nuts influenced me.

[Rude Dog]

2. Considering that nobody who knows about this has said...

...that we "evolved from chimps" (I think you mean "evolved from apes", which is equally wrong), your post loses a lot of impact.

[Lex]

3. It's always been a "common ancestor" theory

or so I thought. :shrug:

[FarrenH]

5. You have a mistaken impression

about previous views on human evolution. Prior to the discovery of Ardi, the prevailing scientific view did not have us evolving from chimps, but from a common ancestor.

The recent Ardipithecus find just alters the course of that divergence. And suggests the possibility that chimps have evolved further from the common ancestor than was previously thought - perhaps even further than us. The most startling thing about Ardipithecus is not that it alters our views on common ancestory, but that it also suggests long-held ideas about us evolving upright walking because of deforestation are wrong.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Ok...

[Oregone]

7. Concise summary of what I saw on this whole deal

Very close to: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/origins/all-things-darwin/

[truedelphi]

24. Thank you for that informative link. n/t

[obliviously]

8. Of course the chimps have evolved further than us!

They are just holding back waiting for the perfect time and they and the dolphins will form a third party and take control of our government. Could happen, Just sayin'

[spoony]

9. The question is, what will their platform be?

Who knows, dolphins with thumbs might get a swollen ego and go libertarian or something.

[obliviously]

11. That does open up a whole new kettle of fish!

[spoony]

12. Hopefully whatever they do, they'll do it with a sense of porpoise.

:D

[truedelphi]

18. I can't quite handle that kind of pun-ishment so late at night. n/t

[Oregone]

10. I really hope this happens

My last refuge of hope lies on the back on the surge of the Zombie alliance, but this would be a less bitter path to real reform.

[FarrenH]

20. Jokes aside

its worth pointing out that "evolved further than us from the common ancestor" doesn't imply superior adaption, just greater genetic change.

I know many people still fall into the trap of thinking that evolution involves getting "better" in some universal sense, or more complex - rather than just following a different chain of adaptation to environment. In fact species can become less complex, smart, strong or whatever through adaptation. IOW, chimps may have evolved further from our common ancestor but are nonetheless at a competitive disadvantage in a environments dominated by their human cousins. So its worth pointing that out.

[Johonny]

27. The thing I didn't like about the dicovery special

was that they showed two linear lines of decent from a common ancestor. With Ardi clearly on one side. If anything, the last 150 years of discoveries on human and chimp ancestors has shown is the hominid tree was much more bushy than previous thought. Is Ardi our direct ancestor or a branch species that has no living descendants. It's not all that clear to me from the special.

[Puzzler]

13. You're being sarcastic, right?

Nobody ever said that humans evolved from chimps.

[blogslut]

14. Wasn't our common ancestor more along the lines of this?

[FarrenH]

19. Nope

Not if you're talking about chimps and humans.

"Common ancestors" or "concestors", to use the charming portmanteau adopted by Dawkins, are the most recent species that was ancestor to both species being considered. If I'm not mistaken what you've shown above is a common ancestor to all primates (from wikipedia:lemurs, lorisids, galagos, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes), an ancestor that (IIRC) co-existed with dinosaurs, but not a much later common ancestor to all apes, never mind humans and chimps, our closest relatives in the ape family.

[blogslut]

21. cool

I see what you're saying.

Just the same, on a symbolic level, I am in love with the idea that those little guys survived because they were little. :hi:

[FarrenH]

23. Yeah me too

If you haven't watched the BBC series "Walking with Dinosaurs" I cannot recommend it too highly. Rather than museum clips and dead skeletons with dry narration, they literally bring the world of the dinosaurs to vivid, animated and very realistic looking life using a combination of animatronics and computer animation, so that it looks like a wildlife documentary shot millions of years ago. Its a truly groundbreaking series.

Among the creatures they focus on is a little ground burrow dwelling proto-mammal that was presumed to be the ancestor of all mammals and I couldn't help but feel a special empathy for the plucky little underdog, even knowing it was a digital reconstruction of a hypothetical creature.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. You're correct and the show where they showed

that one was also very good.

[xchrom]

15. ardi wasn't an ape? nt

[FarrenH]

16. I've always found use of the term "Ape" quite confusing

where humans are concerned, because humans appear to be included among the great apes in anthropological terms, but when modern species are considered, we generally use "ape" to refer to certain non-human primate species.

So it might be said that we're descended from apes in the sense that our common ancestor, chimps and humans are all apes, but we're not descended from any modern ape. We are definitely not descended from chimps, gorillas or any other modern non-human primate species, nor has that ever been a widespread scientific view.

I'm a little rusty on all of this, but Wikipedia has an informative article, as always:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape

Ardi does fit within the original definition of a "hominid" (still employed in some fields, though the term now encompasses other apes in many areas of science), meaning a bipedal ape that is either a direct ancestor of humans or close relative of the direct ancestors of humans

[aquart]

22. What idiot said we evolved from chimps?

Somebody was clearly sleeping in class. Common ancestor. We great apes are considered a late branching. The new find, it seems, is trying to put us on a separate branch from the other great apes but I don't know if the DNA supports that.

Just because a theory is new, doesn't mean it's true.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Listen to the usual religious fanatics

this is a way to tweak them. And yes, it is them who have said, but, but we could not have evolved from Chimps... well whadya know, they were right.

:evilgrin:

By the way, does not matter what theory we are talking about... which is what many posters have missed.

This is religion talking... if we evolved we are part of the animal kingdom... not part of nature... if you believe god put us here for a purpose you cannot accept evolution... why you will send your kids to private schools that do not accept this other religion (projection) and then you send them to run for political office. The idea is to replace those secularists from school boards so we can have ONLY the word of god in there. These are the new joshuas... but that is a whole different matter.

Oh and they were paying in class. It wasn't your traditional science class though.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. I love this Ardipichicus

Kind of a little hobbity creature. I wonder what sort of disposition they had, if they were peaceful or aggressive. It's so cool that the more we learn, the more there is to learn. :)