tee hee RF will be so disappointed..we all know how much he loved going to the zoo and visiting his aunts and uncles.

I could use an opposable big toe right about now. My opposable thumbs have symptoms of carpal tunnel.

Here's a better image of the skeletal structure of Ardi:

An artist's rendering based on this skeleton:

If I suggested that both of you (scr and pax) read the article referenced by the blogger to which pax is referencing here, would you do it?

The discovery of Ardi does very little for your cause, Pax. Firstly, it is a 4.4 million year old fossil. The Bible is still saying something like 6,000 years as the age of the planet, isn't it? I mean if you think it all literally true, word for word.

Also, Ardi is explained by a thorough belief in evolution. In fact, her discovery is another piece of evidence proving that evolution is a fact (just to forestall the sophomores among us who think calling a thing a theory makes it the same as an opinion).

Anthropologists have argued about the ancestor of apes and of man. The argument is how far back the common ancestor is, not whether it exists or not.

Lucy, at 3.2 million years old, put the common ancestor somewhere in her neighborhood, some reasoned, because of some primitive aspects of her physiology. Ardi puts the date much earlier, for the same reason. She does not prove that a common ancestor did, or did not, exist. The same as was the case for Lucy.

The reason for the belief in the common ancestor is not, in fact, in the fossil evidence at all. It is in living populations. The similarities in gene structure, physiology, abilities and social structures.

So, despite the misguided (misinformed?) attempt to use a fossil to argue against the science of studying fossils by the blogger you referenced, be glad that your friends here at bako.com are better read than he and can guide you right.

You're free to believe what you want about the origins of humanity, Pax, but I just want to make two points:

1. Scientists don't believe we evolved from apes. They believe human beings and apes had a common ancestor. That's different.
2. Catholics are free to believe in evolution. We're not biblical literalists who are compelled to believe the story of Adam and Eve is factual.  I quote an MSNBC story from two years ago about the notion that evolution somehow negates creation:

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” (Pope Benedict XVI) said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...

 He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

And no answer could be more honest than, "I don't know."

Ray: I'm sure you're correct on one level. But religious adherents shouldn't be mocked for saying, "Yet, I believe..."

lol     Apes are one of 16 distinct lines of primates.

Ape is the most commonly known, but far from the only primates.

Humans and Apes are just cousins in the general  lineage of evolution.

I did read it you DS..and further more  *I* understood it,,,,, whats wrong with your comprehension skills these days?? here lemme quote you a taste and if you have trouble understanding it I promise I will take the time to explain it to you..

" What matters is what we are now, not what might have been millions of years ago or how we got here.  But this report concludes that our common ancestry–still undiscovered–is thrown even further back–with apparently no direct lineage of human beings arising from apes.

Im sorry it cant get much clearer..Cheetah aint your long lost uncle..thats the point of the blog..twist it however you guys like so you feel comfy your side didnt loose the argument..its ok, Its your mirror you look into every morning

I'm really going to have a laugh when we each die and are confronted with...Quetzalcoatl.

What do any of us say then?  LOL

Richard Dawkins has just come out with a new book on evolution.  It's in bookstores now.  Quite a good read from what I'm hearing.

scr: the point here is that only the cartoon-instead-of-reality-loving right ever thought that the whole of the evolution of humans argument centered on the humans and apes have a common ancestor idea.

It's like you are one of the fabled blind men, holding on to a part of the elephant, and laughing at me because someone told you that what is in your hand really isn't a rope. The rest of us knew this all along. 

Elinem, I'm all behind what the Holy See would call "theistic evolution." What I despise are those who monkey around with the idea that we are but random products of chance, and use this old-wives' graphic to illustrate so:

We really should update the evolution graphic to this:

Evolution is no accident.  Thanks to natural selection, the environment directs the development of organisms at every level.

Middlepath, then is the environment an accident? Or are you like the materialists who have such a hard time grasping the kind of nothing that Christians believe creation came from?

As an evolved species we have been here for something like 100,000 years. Some anthropologists would set the date further back. In any case, we have been here for a very short time on the geological time scale. Evolutionary changes (racial characteristics) take fewer generations than previously thought.

Few anthropologists or evolutionary researchers think we descended directly from monkeys or apes. That chimps share over 98% of our physiology and monkey cultures adopt their behavior to environmental changes remains a fascination that can't be ignored. Adapting and learning is not a characteristic particular to primates. Sea otters teach their young how to use a rock to open a clam shell. 

The harshest critics of new scientific ideas are scientists. Interpretations of new discoveries are not readily accepted. Plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the early 1950's, even though any school child can see the "puzzle pieces" of South America and Africa on a globe.  

No Pax, the environment isn't an accident.  It's a happy turn of chance in our favor.

Middlepath, I'm glad that you have a lot of faith in the possibility of all this orderliness happening by chance by such mind-blowing odds that one might as well believe there is a God.