New homo species gives creationists the finger.
Offline Pre-history rewritten as new human DNA discovered
Updated
New species: Scientists at the site of the discovery in Siberia (Johannes Krause)
German scientists have discovered a new human species that lived in Siberia around 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.
The evidence changes the picture of pre-human habitation on Earth.
The species lived at the same time as modern humans and Neanderthals and shared a common ancestor with them.
Scientists found the fossilised remnants of a tiny finger bone that probably belonged to a small child and analysed its DNA.
Dr Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany is the author of a paper on the finding which has been published in Nature.
He says the fossil was like nothing he had seen before.
"I did several analyses to make sure that this DNA is authentic, that this DNA is really old and that this DNA is what had seemed to be a new hominine lineage," he said.
"A new discovery, different from human DNA and different from Neanderthal DNA, for example."
His colleague and co-author, Professor Svante Paavo, was not initially convinced.
"It was of course absolutely amazing and I first really didn't believe him. I thought he was pulling my leg," he said.
The discovery crucially suggests the species were living at the same time and in the same place as modern humans and Neanderthals.
The deputy director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, Dr Jeremy Austin, says it is a very significant find.
"They've found this hominine lineage. It's not a modern human. It's not a Neanderthal. It's not a chimpanzee. It's something sort of halfway in between, at a time period when no-one thought that these sorts of ancestral human forms were still alive," he said.
Professor Paavo says the new species shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals and modern humans. The common ancestor left Africa about 1 million years ago.
"Maybe it is oversimplification to think about particular migrations out of Africa," he said.
"There might have been more or less continuous flow, and the picture that's going to emerge in the next years might be a much more complex one."
It was only a few years ago that the 'Hobbit of Flores' was discovered and proclaimed a new species.
Dr Austin says with the discovery of this new human in Siberia, scientists are adjusting to the possibility that four species were living at the same time when previously it was thought there were only two.
"If all this paper does is say there's a whole pile of diversity out there, essentially there's more human species we don't know about, then that's a really important finding." he said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/25/2855548.htm
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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who wallows in this sort of discovery. Multiple interelated species cohabiting on earth before some die out and one survives. Suck up your transitionals, pygmy brains.
It gets me all poetical.
devolution of god November 19, 2004
that discovery under grey soil of
some speck in the east indies - a
tiny man who grew up on the treed
side of the volcano while sumeria
dreamed her word pictures - cries
with hope that we’ve invented god
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I wallowed in it before reaching puberty. I had a book that illustrated the various classes of vertabrates and the notable species amongst them, throughout the eras of Natural History- including a hypothetical crocodile believed to be 78 feet long, from nose to tip of the tail (all of which was based on a jaw fragment, at that.)
Now I mostly wonder how to make evolution approachable by the average person. One of my teachers in 10th and 11th grades -who claimed to have tested for an IQ of 160 in college- could not be convinced in the basic principle of biological evolution; which is in essence the slow change of life over several generations as a means of adapting to new environmental challenges (and opportunities). It was simply too counterintuitive to her theistic and largely idealistic mind. It was amusing to me (and somewhat frustrating, because she was highly intelligent), as when she saw an illustration or photo of chimpanzees she would point and say something to the effect "Look! It's Kapkao's cousins!" with a smirk on her face. I would put an equally smug look on my face and say "Yep."
I wonder, sometimes... if it's not impossible to overcome the obstacle of 'counterintuitiveness' that many rational individuals face when explaining scientific phenomena to largely ordinary (and often theistic) individuals.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Wow nice find
suck it hovid
It doesn't matter. We've moved past the point where evidence matters in the evolution debate. Anyone willing to be convinced by facts has already been convinced.
Now it will just take time, so the older generations can die and let more plastic minds take over.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I believe that if the facts are there, the facts are there. I don't debate against proven fact, and noone should.
Romans 1:20 NIV: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
The greatest single cause of atheism today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him with their life style. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
--Brennan Murphy