Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 1, 2009 - 03:05pm PT
|
"Ardi" is the nickname given to a shattered skeleton that an international team of scientists painstakingly excavated from the Ethiopian desert, analyzed over the course of 15 years, and declared Thursday to be a major breakthrough in the study of human origins. Ardi lived more than a million years before "Lucy," a much-celebrated, 3.2 million-year-old fossil of an early human progenitor found just 45 miles away.
If the scientists are correct, Ardi and her kind were the ancestors of our ancestors. She was a transitional figure, almost a hybrid -- a tree creature who could carry food in her arms as she explored the woodland floor on two legs.
The skeletal remnants of Ardi were recovered along with bones from at least 35 other members of a species that the scientists call Ardipithecus ramidus. Their arduous investigation had incited grumbling in a scientific community that had grown impatient to find out what exactly had been found in the silty clay of Ethiopia. The answers are dramatic, detailed in 11 papers published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science and discussed in dual press conferences in Washington and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The discovery of Ardi "further confirms that Ethiopia is the cradle of humankind," said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the paleontologist who found the first two bones of Ardi in 1994.
Human origins is a field with high stakes and small bones, and the elaborate roll-out of the new research probably will trigger debate about the message contained in fossils so fragile they had to be excavated with dental picks and porcupine quills.
"It was a sort of a time capsule from 4.4. million years ago with contents that nobody had ever seen before," said Tim White, a University of California at Berkeley paleoanthropologist who led the Ardi research team. "We worked for years at opening that time capsule by collecting every shred of evidence that we could find."
The scientists who found Ardi do not contend that she necessarily evolved into Lucy. The human line of primates could have splintered, with some species turning into genetic dead ends. Lucy's line of primates could have diverged from Ardi's line long before Ardi lived. Even so, White said he believes that his team has documented an evolutionary sequence that shows, at the genus level, where people came from. Ardipithecus, then Australopithecus, then Homo.
Lucy, a member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, was a small-brained primate that had fully adapted to a bipedal life and had expanded its habitat beyond the forest into the savannah of Africa. Unlike Ardi, she lacked the grasping big toe. Ardi and Lucy had different teeth, with Lucy's enlarged molars more adapted to a wide-ranging diet on the savannah.
"Ardi tells us twice as much as Lucy did. We have hands and feet, a more complete environment, a more complete skeleton, it's older, it's more primitive, it shows us the process of transformation from common ancestor to hominid," said C. Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent State University who was part of the Ardi team.
complete article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/01/AR2009100103432.html
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
"Yohannes Haile-Selassie"?
Jah love!
Sure as Ska and Reggae have a common ancestor.
|
|
nature
climber
Tucson, AZ
|
|
What where's the missing link?
~Jody
|
|
the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
|
|
Very cool indeed..
|
|
Jingy
Social climber
Flatland, Ca
|
|
there is no god....
or at least the story in the book is a little off.. and that pulls the whole book into question as it is man made
|
|
apogee
climber
|
|
It's all part of God's plan.....
Heh.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 03:55pm PT
|
2008 Republican Primary Debate:
Raise your hand if you believe in Evolution.
NOT ONE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RAISED HIS HAND.
NOT ONE.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 04:12pm PT
|
Fatty,
1) Your market timing is horrible. You went short over a month ago.
Given the decay in your options, you might be back to break even from your losses. Stick with raking in commissions, you are no pure trader.
2) You said you were "net short". That is a bush league pussy position.
Next time you want to play with the big boys, quit screwing around
and go 100% short the December S&P 500, and from 1072.
Sigh, you have SO much to learn, Jeff.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 04:17pm PT
|
Scientists can use different chemicals for absolute dating:
The best-known absolute dating technique is carbon-14 dating, which archaeologists prefer to use. However, the half-life of carbon-14 is only 5730 years, so the method cannot be used for materials older than about 70,000 years.
Radiometric dating involves the use of isotope series, such as rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead, all of which have very long half-lives, ranging from 0.7 to 48.6 billion years. Subtle differences in the relative proportions of the two isotopes can give good dates for rocks of any age.
Scientists can check their accuracy by using different isotopes.
The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. Since then, geologists have made many tens of thousands of radiometric age determinations, and they have refined the earlier estimates. A key point is that it is no longer necessary simply to accept one chemical determination of a rock’s age. Age estimates can be cross-tested by using different isotope pairs. Results from different techniques, often measured in rival labs, continually confirm each other.
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
It's very clever of G-- to test our faith by planting fossils.
|
|
TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom
|
|
I'm a fossil. So I speak from experience. What were we talking about?
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 04:53pm PT
|
NOPE, it is not Jeff.
I was both a Stock Broker and a Commodity Futures Broker in the 1970's.
Even way back then, I put ALL my client's money, AND MY OWN, in a
basket of multiple account orders. All of us took the same position
at the same moment.
No one should give anyone else investment advice unless they personally
are risking the same percentage of their net worth on the result.
Otherwise, it is not honest, and just all BS talking into commissions.
Someday Jeff, I hope you get good enough to not have to make a living
by talking other people in to buying market crap.
That's no different from selling used cars. Trade ONLY your own account.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
Sheesh, Tami, where do you think petrified forests come from?
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 05:27pm PT
|
Tami,
sorry it got off topic, thanks to Fatty spewing stock market crap talk.
However, he IS such a fossil........
And you can see from my avitar which side my people come from.
|
|
cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
|
|
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
Crazy world and the creationists are missing it all..
Do you really believe that? You think it's either science or creation? If you're a scientist you don't believe in creation and vice versa?
That's untrue and pretty f*#king assuming.
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
Aww come on now Bluey, it's just that if you have any background in science whatsoever, you're more likely to have the critical thinking skills necessary to realize that there is no evidence whatsoever for our "creation" by a higher power in the manner christians claim.
Eric, I have an electronics degree and troubleshoot very complex digital electronic systems down to the f*#king component level of a specific card.
I wonder if there's any critical thinking involved in that? I must be too stupid to understand your point, but whatever....ignorance is bliss, right?
|
|
the Fet
Supercaliyosemistic climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
|
|
If you're a scientist you don't believe in creation and vice versa?
Creationists are generally though of as those who reject naturalistic origins of man, i.e. evolution.
Could God have created the universe in such a way so that man would eventually be created through natural processes? Sure.
But did God create Adam and Eve in current human form? That takes a great deal of self delusion to believe IMO.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 08:21pm PT
|
Well, some 92% of the members of the American Society of Scientists
do not believe in the traditional concept of a "god".
Sure, go ahead and attack the source, pretend that "scientists" can be
just as dumb as anyone else. Maybe say you know a dumb scientist.
Always attack the source when you don't like what a poll or study says.
This high number of non believers holds true throughout the general population
as it relates to education level.
In general, the more education one has, the more one is trained to think
in a deductive manner, and therefore less likely to accept the concept of a god.
Not liking this either, one could then attack education, if they knew how to.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!