If you’ve been paying attention to science news this week, you’ve seen the latest link in the human evolution chain being promoted by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. The fossil which was discovered in Ethiopia in the early 1990s was named Ardipithicus ramidus, or Ardi for short. Scientists at UC Berkeley claim the hominid is older than Lucy who years ago was thought to be the oldest. They claim Ardi is 4.4 million years old.
The fossil is made up of 125 pieces and according to Tim White, who co-leads the team of scientists, “To understand the biology, the parts you really want are the skull and teeth, the pelvis, the limbs and the hands and the feet. And we have all of them,” (see Time magazine). And Time also reports that Ardi has good bones, even though it took 15 years to reconstruct the skeleton. Furthermore, all that has been shown in the news reports of the skeleton are a few small bone fragments and an artists’ rendition of what the scientists think the hominid must have looked like.
But other scientific publications seem to contradict the reports that Ardi has good bones. In fact, it has been reported that the reconstruction took so long because the bones were brittle and extremely fragile. Casey Luskin of Evolution News & Views highlights some of the articles on Ardi. Time magazine states the following as quoted by Luskin:
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. Indeed, looking at the evidence, different paleoanthropologists may have different interpretations of how Ardi moved or what she reveals about the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.
Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “Excavating Ardi: A New Piece for the Puzzle of Human Evolution,” Time Magazine (October 1, 2009).
Luskin points out that the pelvis is one of the main parts that has to be in good shape to determine if a creature is bipedal. Yet the pelvis in this instance is in poor shape if it was crushed so bad it looked like a stew. Here’s another quote pointed out by Luskin in an article published several years ago:
The next field season, team member Yohannes Haile-Selassie found the first of more than 100 fragments that make up about half of a single skeleton of this species, including a pelvis, leg, ankle and foot bones, wrist and hand bones, a lower jaw with teeth—and a skull. But in the past 8 years no details have been published on this skeleton. Why the delay? In part because the bones are so soft and crushed that preparing them requires a Herculean effort, says White. The skull is “squished,” he says, “and the bone is so chalky that when I clean an edge it erodes, so I have to mold every one of the broken pieces to reconstruct it.” The team hopes to publish in a year or so, and White claims that the skeleton is worth the wait, calling it a “phenomenal individual” that will be the “Rosetta stone for understanding bipedalism.” [emphases mine]
Ann Gibbons, “In Search of the First Hominids,” Science, 295:1214-1219 (February 15, 2002)
But didn’t this same White tell Time that the bones were good? How can bones be soft, crushed, squished, and chalky one minute and then, voila, the next minute they’re called good? Methinks it sounds rather hokey. Then Luskin points out that this same Ann Gibbons in her latest article for Science magazine observes the following:
But the team’s excitement was tempered by the skeleton’s terrible condition. The bones literally crumbled when touched. White called it road kill. And parts of the skeleton had been trampled and scattered into more than 100 fragments; the skull was crushed to 4 centimeters in height.
Ann Gibbons, “A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled,” Science, Vol. 326:36-40 (Oct. 2, 2009)
If the skeleton had been trampled and crushed by wildlife to the point of being seriously fragmented and emaciated, and reconstruction of skeletons depends on precise measurements, as pointed out by Luskin, how is it even possible for these scientists to get an accurate view of what Ardi should look like? Ardi’s reconstruction was truly arduous based on these accounts and based on the statements published about the skeleton, the scientists cannot possibly come up with an accurate description or depiction of what this Ardi actually looked like. I have a feeling that these scientists are desperate for their 15 minutes of fame and want to promote their October 11th documentary on the Discovery channel and want so badly for the theory of evolution to be true that they will do anything, even fudge evidence with artists’ imagined renderings, to make everyone think they’re on the right track. I, for one, refuse to be hoodwinked by this sleight of hand they’ve conjured up for the masses.
…keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: [1 Timothy 6:20]
–posted by Harry A. Gaylord–
