Speaking of confirming something I’ve been saying for some time, this article at Live Science on early human fossils:
These new fossils suggest that far-flung groups of ancient humans were more genetically linked across Eurasia than often previously thought, researchers in the new study said.
“I don’t like to think of these fossils as those of hybrids,” said study co-author Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Hybridization implies that all of these groups were separate and discrete, only occasionally interacting. What these fossils show is that these groups were basically not separate. The idea that there were separate lineages in different parts of the world is increasingly contradicted by the evidence we are unearthing.”
confirms what I’ve been saying about early hominids. Anatomically modern Humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and who knows how many other early humans aren’t different species; they’re different varieties. The relationships between them are more like the relationship between Golden Retrievers and German Shepherds than are like the relationship between, say, lions and tigers.
The really big question is whether erectus was a different species or not. I know that Leakey thought it was but I’m not so sure and to the best of my knowledge nobody has succeeded in extracting Homo erectus DNA yet.
Evolution has always been an interest of mine, because the theory looks so good while evidence is lacking.
We all remember Carl Sagan and his Billions and Billions of years, deep time, and so forth.
Here in Ne. we have an excavation going on 30 years now of animals killed by volcanic ash about 12,000,000 years ago. Nothing like them survives today, yet the area is fully populated by fauna.
Camels, Rhinoceroses, primitive horses with no modern descendants, there are no Bison in the excavation?
So I ask what is evolution’s supposed timeline?
Is 12,000,000 years long enough to replace most of the animal that inhabit the central plains?
http://ashfall.unl.edu/ check it out
That’s one of the reasons I think that sapiens and erectus are likely to be the same species.
You miss my point, which is, is evolution of the species real?
Is there really enough time for all of the changes in the DNA to have occurred by chance. I really am asking, Is God real?
And if you say NO, I say, your’e evidence is weak, at best.
There is a great deal of subjectivity in the definition of species. The Dobzhansky/Mayr definition is widely quoted but seldom used, at least by practicing taxonomists, who nowadays use sRNA. In fact, you could argue that there are 20 or 30 diiferent human species extant today. After all, dogs, coyotes and wolves are distinguished by morphology and behavior, not by interbreeding capacity.
Gray, we have seen species evolve in our lifetimes — antibiotic resistance is real, after all. 12M years may or may not be enough time for bison to evolve from squirrels (or whatever species they came from) but it is plenty of time for them to wander into an area made vacant by the extinction of the megafauna.
There were mammoths in America 10,000 years ago. They’re gone now, due to a combination of climate change destroying their habitat, and hunting from early humans. Other animals thrived better in that environment — megafauna does not survive contact with man, as too many resources are tied into a single organism, which limits their numbers, and makes them more vulnerable to extinction from hunters upsetting the balance.
None of which means god doesn’t exist. Whether it is the Flying Spaghetti Monster being all knowing and all powerful, and so capable of setting things into motions billions of years ago, or whether he graced us with his noodley appendage and create the world last Thursday, complete with billions of years of history and evolution, there are lots of ways to reconcile His Noodleship with science as we know it.