

Oldest "Human" Skeleton Found--Disproves "Missing Link" - muriithi
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html

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biohacker42
There is no such thing as "missing" links.

We have a theory about descent with modification, and we have a theory about
the age of the earth and together they make useful predictions about where you
are likely to find bones similar to older and younger bones.

So far these theories have not been falsified.

Missing links on the other hand, are pure media made up, attention grabbing
fud.

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nollidge
To be clear, us and chimps do have a common ancestor which links us, although
that's true of any two extant species of any kind of life on the planet, not
just us and chimps. To describe that particular specimen as "missing" is
accurate, but it's a rather melodramatic adjective - it's not like we need
that one specific specimen in order to discover anything about our
relationship to chimps (or whatever else).

So really, "missing link" is just a headline-grabbing way of saying "common
ancestor that we haven't dug up yet (and probably never will because fossils
are extremely rare)".

Regardless, Ardi does not "disprove" a missing link in any way, shape, or
form. Ardi does not invalidate the theory that there _is_ a common ancestor
between us and chimps; she merely shows that it probably doesn't look like we
think it does. Until now, scientists figured the common ancestor looked more
like a chimp than a human; now we know that's probably not the case.

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madebylaw
"Study co-leader White sees nothing about the skeleton "that would exclude it
from ancestral status." But he said more fossils would be needed to fully
resolve the issue."

Headline is misleading, this species isn't officially a human ancestor.

~~~
nollidge
That is true, but then again hardly any specimen we find is going to literally
be your great^n grandparent. When an animal dies, it rarely leaves around a
fossil; so most or even all of what we've found is stuff that is closely
related to, but is not exactly, our ancestors.

A visual analogy would be that we're an apple from the top of the tree; the
fossils we find are apples from lower branches. Our apple didn't grow from
theirs, but the branches we grew from _did_ grow out of the branches that
their fruit grew from.

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artsrc
There are two missing links, one between us and this thing, and another
between this thing and something else. And it will keep getting worse the more
missing links we find.

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tocomment
I may be misunderstanding this, but are they saying they found a common
ancestor to chimps and humans? Are they saying this common ancestor walked
upright? If so why would chimps change from walking upright, to that awkward
walking on their knuckles deal? That doesn't really make sense to me.

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Tichy
There seems to be a lot of speculation involved. And what was the point of the
randomly inserted "sex for food" paragraph? My respect for National Geographic
just went down several notches.

