The "Tuscan Swamp Ape"

No, it is not another Bigfoot, it is an ape that appears to have gone extinct toward the end of the Miocene, around 5.5 mya and went by the name of Oreopithecus (which Fred Smith used to call "the cookie monster"). According to the story in Life in Italy:

It had a small head and large eyes, and its teeth indicate it lived on a diet of berries, fruits and vegetables. Crucially, it also had hands capable of manipulation similar to that of a human being. According to Rook, it had more dexterity than any ape alive today and could handle objects with the same precision that was formerly thought to be the exclusive capability of homo sapiens and their direct ancestors. The Swamp Ape evolved in isolation from other animals on the tropical island, where it appeared to have had no natural predators. However, as sea levels fell with the Ice Age, a land bridge appeared, bringing with it dangerous new species, including large predators, which eventually wiped out the Swamp Ape.

Convergent evolution. I love it.

Top Scientist: Teach Creationism

The Daily Mail is reporting on Michael Reiss, Director of Education for the Royal Society, who is now arguing that creationism should be taught along science in schools. They write:

Children should be taught about creationism in school biology lessons, a leading scientist said today. Professor Reiss, a Church of England minister and former biology teacher, said he strongly believed in teaching the theory of evolution to children.

But rather than dismiss creationism as wrong or stupid, teachers should be prepared to discuss it as another 'worldview'. 'It arises from my time as a biology teacher in schools when I realise that simply banging on about evolution didn’t lead some pupils to change their views at all,' he said. 'I had previously been rather evangelical about teaching evolution, trying to change pupil’s minds. 'Now I would be rather more content simply for them to understand it as one way of understanding the universe.'

Or is he? Later in the same article, we find:

But Professor Reiss added: 'Some of my comments about the teaching of creationism have been misinterpreted as suggesting that creationism should be taught in science classes. Creationism has no scientific basis.

'However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis.

It is amazing what a sensationalistic headline will get you. What he says in the second quote is the kicker. If you teach creationism in the public schools, it will be exposed for the scientific fraud that it is. Will it change minds? Who knows.

Creation Moments

Anonymous has left a comment on the "Sarah Palin and Creationism" post. Next time I am not going to post something unless they are willing to identify themselves. It is like knocking on someone's door with a bag over your head. Anyway, he/she lists several links in the comment which I would like to address. The first one is to a page called "Teaching Evolution: Is there a Better way?" The opening paragraph states:

Today's public school textbooks on Biology, Earth sciences, and Human society generally well-present the facts; it is the interpretation of those facts that is currently under fire and is being openly questioned. Without exception, that interpretation is from the evolutionary perspective and serves to colour the very words that are used in the text. Textbooks on Human anthropology are notoriously bad in this repect [sic].

Currently under fire and openly questioned? Other than the ICR and like organizations, who is doing the questioning? How are textbooks on human anthropology (I assume they mean human palaeontology) notoriously bad in this regard? Mr. Taylor does not say. A bit later, he writes:

For example, the octopus eye and the human eye are very similar yet these are not regarded as homologous because the octopus and the human are not believed to have a common ancestor. But, having decided that two similar-looking limbs are homologous, it is then argued that this similarity proves their common ancestry! This is nothing more than circular reasoning.

How is this circular reasoning? The reason they are homologous is that they are made up of the same anatomical parts and embryologic studies show that they develop the same way. Structures are analogous if they do not derive from the same anatomical parts. That is evolution 101. This passage shows that Mr. Taylor knows little about how homology works.

In the second link, Should Evolution be Immune from Criticism?, the author David Buckna, writes:

One popular biology textbook used in public schools is "Inquiry Into Life" by Sylvia Mader, published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson. On page 529 (eighth edition) are diagrams of giraffes which compare Lamarck's theory and Darwin's theory. According to Darwin, "Early giraffes probably had necks of various lengths. Natural selection due to competition led to survival of the longer-necked giraffes and their offspring. Eventually, only long-necked giraffes survived the competition."

Regarding giraffes, shouldn't students be taught to distinguish between fact and speculation? No fossil evidence has ever been unearthed showing giraffes with shorter necks.

Yeah it has. Here is a pair of articles detailing it. Here is another comment:

It's certainly easy enough for evolutionists to pick out something and call it a "giraffe" and thus generate an ancestor for giraffes. Carroll illustrates a marvelous example of how other ancestors are generated: He suggested that the wolf-like Mesonychus (which he believes was the terrestrial ancestor of whales) should be placed in the Order Cetacea. Since the Order Cetacea is reserved for whales, presto! Mesonychids are whales!

This is just silly. Mesonychus has characteristics in the inner ear and orbital construction that are similar to whales to the exclusion of other animals. That is why researchers draw similarities.

I would comment on the third article but it couldn't be found on the link provided and I don't have time to go hunting for it. The fourth article, Teaching Origins in Public Schools takes a different approach: teach evolution and then pick out the holes in it. He then lists several criticism of evolution that would come out during teaching. I don't have time to go through them all but, for example, he writes:

Evolution is necessarily speculative:

Every science is necessarily speculative. That is how science proceeds, by speculation and then hypothetical testing. This is a non-criticism.

It behooves the teacher to fairly distinguish fact from speculation in any discussion of evolution as this will not always be obvious to the student. Even the term "theory" ought to be strictly limited to those hypotheses which are subject to the scientific method and thus are capable of being disproven by a critical experiment.

This shows a lack of understanding of what a theory is and how it is differentiated from a hypothesis. A theory is a broad statement of relationships about a particular set of phenomena. Quantum theory and gravitational theory are classic examples. A hypothesis is simply a test of a particular question that falls within that overall theoretical construct.

Evolution seems incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics:

Perhaps the reason that there is so little compelling scientific evidence in support of evolution is that it appears to contradict one of the most fundamental laws of nature - the second law of thermodynamics. This law says what is intuitively obvious to most people, that all real processes tend toward a condition of greater probability and disorder. Thus a house is more likely to spontaneously disassemble over a period of a thousand years than it is to assemble itself into an even more complex and more highly organized structure. Order can be achieved out of disorder, but it requires information, programs, energy and machines. Energy from the sun can help to transform an acorn into an oak tree but it requires the indescribably complex biological machinery and information in the living cells of the acorn to do it. Dead oak trees are destroyed by the same energy from the sun.

It is also intuitively obvious that, were the sun to simply disappear, we would survive about a day. Kelvin made his statements in the 1870s before anyone was aware that radioactivity was what was responsible for the internal heating of the earth and it was not until Einstein came along that we had some idea of why the sun has burned as long as it has (Harter 2005).

The other examples betray evidence of quote mining. This is the trick of misquoting authors to get them to say what you want them to say. There is a great page on TalkOrigins that lists the most egregious examples. So, once again, it is a case of creationist' half-truths, quote mines and out-dated information that has become standard and reveals, again, why no one in the scientific community takes them seriously.

I obviously didn't take time to address all of the concerns of anonymous but if you do a peripheral search of the literature, all of the comments made in the articles have been repeatedly rebutted in different places. Go to Talk Origins for good bibliographies of these.

"Strengths and Weaknesses"

The Eugene Register-Guard has an editorial on the growth in popularity of the phrase "strengths and weaknesses" with regard to teaching evolution. Written anonymously (maddeningly), the author notes:

It is the quintessential irony that nothing has evolved more conspicuously than the strategies creationists keep devising to challenge evolution, which has been accurately characterized as “the organizing principle of life science.”

Ample evidence of this exists, of course. One such example is the pre-Edwards vs. Aguilard text of Of Pandas and People and the post decision text, which had substituted the word "creationist" with the words "Design Proponents." The author also points out the hypocrisy in these movements:

Ever the trailblazer for pioneering new methods to legitimize injecting religion into science classrooms, the Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution. Not creationism or intelligent design, just “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution.

This needs to be pointed out more often.

Sarah Palin, Creationism and AIG

Answers in Genesis wants to know if Sarah Palin is a creationist. In a recent article, they address this question and conclude with a resounding "maybe."

In 2006, then-candidate Palin indicated in a TV debate that creation should be taught alongside evolution in the state’s public schools, declaring that schools should “teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.”³ Now, in stating this, she may have been advocating the teaching of scientific creationism, as opposed to biblical creationism⁴ (the latter having been deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987⁵), but we don’t really know.

They also note that she backpedaled on this the following day by stating that she:

...meant to say that a discussion of alternative views should be allowed but not forced on students, adding: “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”

They then make the following (correct) observation about politicians:

Most politicians, when asked about their origins beliefs, try to answer somewhere between the two bookends, settling into a comfortable place in between so as not to alienate those who believe in a Creator (the overwhelming majority of Americans) while protecting themselves from allegations that they reject mainstream science. We recall that in 2007, Republican candidate for president Gov. Mike Huckabee put up his hand during a debate to show that he did not believe in evolution. Some creationists quickly rejoiced, concluding that Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, must believe in a literal, straightforward reading of Genesis. Later, however, he made it clear that he did not necessarily want to be identified with young-earth creationism, saying that he was not sure about a six-day creation.

That's as true as it goes but they then go on to say something somewhat startling:

Gov. Palin’s clarification of her views on the teaching of origins in public schools mirrors AiG’s general view: biblical creation should not be forced into classrooms, specifically because science teachers with a strong belief in evolution would teach creation poorly, so it would ultimately be counterproductive for the students. The better tactic would be to follow through on the Supreme Court’s ruling that teachers are “free to teach any and all facets” of all the scientific theories concerning the origins of humankind (p. 9 of the ruling).

I suspect they are taking liberties with the "teaching creation poorly" part, since we have no idea why she doesn't want to force creationism on the public schools. Although this tact will open up creationist teaching to a level of scrutiny it has not, as of yet, had, this somewhat subtler approach dovetails directly into the recent spate of "academic freedom" bills that have been passed.

The Movement of the Human Race

The Guardian has a story (originally from the Observer) covering a study done to sequence the genetic make-up of over 250 000 volunteers. They write:

Scientists have known for several years that modern humans emerged from sub-Saharan Africa within the past 100,000 years. However, the £25m Genographic project - backed by National Geographic, IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation - has recently transformed that knowledge by painting in a mass of highly detailed information about our African exodus.

After emerging into the Arabian peninsula, some of our ancestors took sea routes along the south Asian coast to reach Australia 50,000 years ago. Only later, about 40,000 years ago, did we enter Europe - its cold and its Neanderthals making it far less hospitable - while one group of Asians headed farther east over the land bridge that then connected their continent to America.

Such stories sort of gloss over the possible contributions of archaic Homo sapiens' genes to the early modern migrants, an issue hotly debated in palaeoanthropology circles. More to come, I hope.

Reevaluation of the Palau Small-Bodied Human Remains: "Berger Got It Wrong."

Science Daily is reporting on a study done by archaeologists from three different universities, University of Oregon, North Carolina State University and the Australian National University, who claim that Lee Berger's contention that the Palau remains are those of primitive, dwarf-sized humans is in error:

"Our evidence indicates the earliest inhabitants of Palau were of normal stature, and it counters the evidence that Berger, et al, presented in their paper indicating there was a reduced stature population in early Palau," said University of Oregon anthropologist Greg C. Nelson. "Our research from whole bones and whole skeletons indicates that the earliest individuals in Palau were of normal stature but gracile. In other words, they were thin."

They are also scathing on Berger's overall work in this area:

"I think Berger's primary mistakes were his not understanding the variation in the skeletal population in which he was working, using fragmentary remains again in a situation where he didn't understand variation, and stepping outside his own area of expertise, which, I think all scientists try not to do but sometimes we do," Nelson said.

"One of his biggest mistakes was rushing to publish," Nelson said of Berger. "He did not take the time to understand the area in which he was working -- its entire history, not just the skeletal stuff," he said. "Any time you work anywhere, you have to understand this history. You just can't walk in and cowboy it, pull some stuff out and draw conclusions in the absence of understanding the bigger picture."

One suspects that there is more here than meets the eye between these two groups of researchers. Berger has yet to respond and this story does not mention the evidence corroborating Berger's contentions from the island of Flores, although one suspects that this group will turn its attention to those remains now.

Well, its plain and simple that I am not going to get anything other than Sarah Palin stories today. It is either the Palin "media mayhem" or "Palinsanity," take your pick. I will try to find the most interesting ones.

Update: Well I was wrong. See the above post.

Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and Creationism

According to a story in the Minnesota Independent, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has publicly backed Sarah Palin's ideas of teaching creationism even as she was downplaying it. Not a smart move. The story notes:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty came to the aid of Gov. Sarah Palin on Sunday on the issue of teaching creationism (aka “intelligent design”) in the classroom. While he stopped short of endorsing a mandated “God created the world in 7 days 10,000 years ago” curriculum, he said he agreed with the theory that evangelical Christians tout as a replacement for evolutionary theory.

He said that Palin’s comments about teaching creationism were “appropriate,” then said it’s up to local school boards to decide, then added that he personally supports creationism.

The article recounts an interview with Pawlenty and Tom Brokaw in which Brokaw sets him up with a question that is at the heart of the whole problem:

MR. BROKAW: In the vast scientific community, do you think that Creationism has the same weight as evolution, and at a time in American education when we are in a crisis when it comes to science, that there ought to be parallel tracks for Creationism versus evolution in the teaching?

GOV. PAWLENTY: In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed — not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated, but in terms of the curriculum in the schools in Minnesota, we’ve taken the approach that that’s a local decision. I know Senator Palin — or Governor Palin — has said intelligent design is something that she thinks should be taught along with evolution in the schools, and I think that’s appropriate. My personal view is that’s a local decision –

Governor Pawlenty doesn't blow the question completely but reveals that he doesn't quite know what ID is. I suspect that Sarah Palin doesn't either.

The Republicans need to bury this issue and bury it fast if they want to have a hope of winning the election. What was a non-issue two elections back is fast becoming one and the Democrats are smart to play it to the hilt. As the discrepancy between the US and other nations in science education becomes more acute, the Republicans will look more medieval as time goes on. To many voters out there, that will look bad.

The Fight Over Toumai

According to a story in Yahoo News, a ruckus has broken out over the Sahelanthropus tchadensis remains that were unearthed in 2001 in the Chad desert. The dispute seems to focus on whether or not the cranium, known as Toumai, dated to between 6.8 and 7.2 million years ago, can actually be dated at all. Although Michel Brunet, its most ardent defender believes the dates, the actual discoverer, Alain Beauvilain, is not so sure:

In general, radiodating of the sediment in which a fossil is found is considered to be a good guide to when the creature died, its remains eventually becoming covered by soil or other debris. But Beauvilain, a Chadian fossil expert of long standing, says that, contrary to Brunet's assertions that the fossil had been "unearthed," the cranium was found loose on the sand.

A thick blue ferruginous, or iron-based, mineral encrusted the skull, which showed clear signs of weathering from desert conditions, Beauvilain says in a commentary in the South African Journal of Science. Beauvilain says it is clear that the soil around the find, and possibly the find itself, had been shifted by wind or erosion, a phenomenon that can happen swiftly and frequently in the desert. So carbon-dating the soil and attributing that to the skull was a perilous exercise, he says. "How many times was it exposed and reburied by shifting sands before being picked up?".

This will obviously need to be cleared up. If that does not happen, Orrorin will rise to the occasion as the best stem hominid.

Sarah Palin and Creationism, Part II

One of the principle attacks against Sarah Palin as John McCain's choice for VP is her support of "alternative" theories about biological diversity. According to an AP article out today:

As a candidate for governor, Sarah Palin called for teaching creationism alongside evolution in public schools. But after Alaska voters elected her, Palin, now Republican John McCain's presidential running mate, kept her campaign pledge to not push the idea in the schools. As for her personal views on evolution, Palin has said, "I believe we have a creator." But she has not made clear whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact. "I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she has been quoted as saying.

If the left blows this up, you can be sure the news media will pick it up but I am guessing it is a non-starter.

Evolution vs. The Implications of Evolution

In a blog that is mostly political in nature, David Friedman asks some uncomfortable questions about two different groups of people, the right, who don't want the teaching of evolution, and the left, who don't understand the implications of it. He writes:

Consider the most striking case, the question of whether there are differences between men and women with regard to the distribution of intellectual abilities or behavioral patterns. That no such differences exist, or if that if they exist they are insignificant, is a matter of faith for many on the left. The faith is so strongly held that when the president of Harvard, himself a prominent academic, merely raised the possibility that one reason why there were fewer women than men in certain fields might be such differences, he was ferociously attacked and eventually driven to resign.

Yet the claim that such differences must be insignificant is one that nobody who took the implications of evolution seriously could maintain. We are, after all, the product of selection for reproductive success. Males and females play quite different roles in reproduction. It would be a striking coincidence if the distribution of abilities and behavioral patterns that was optimal for one sex turned out to also be optimal for the other, rather like two entirely different math problems just happening to have the same answer.


This spills over to physical constitution as well. Men expend energy differently than women do. Also, although there is tolerance in society for transsexuals and homosexuals, nature does not see it that way and they wind up being evolutionary dead-ends. Yet, no one speaks of this in academic circles. Read the whole thing.

Sarah Palin and Creationism

Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News has an article on Sarah Palin and her support for creationism. He writes:

Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night's televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

This sounds ominous, but wait, is it as bad as it sounds?

In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms:

"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum.

Whew. There is a lot to like about Ms. Palin. It would be a shame to see her end up on that side of the aisle. I think McCain has made a good choice. We shall see.

More Intellectual Dishonesty, ICR Style

In late 2005, the ICR concluded an eight year radioisotope study in an effort to support the YEC point of view. This was called Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth. Things did not start out well for them since they didn't find quite what they expected. Early on, Larry Vardiman, lead author for RATE, wrote in 1999:

It appears that much larger quantities of nuclear decay may have occurred than would be expected for 6,000 (or so) years of radioactivity at the currently observed rate. The evidence for this concern stems from (1) the presence of daughter isotopes along the entire decay chain in proximity to parent isotopes, (2) visible scars (halos) from alpha decay, (3) the presence of the alpha particles themselves (helium nuclei) still within the rock where they were apparently formed by nuclear decay, (4) visible tracks from decay by fission, and (5) residual heat produced by nuclear decay in proximity to high uranium concentrations.

Subsequent research suggested that at least 500 million years of radioactive decay had occurred. He, nonetheless, concluded:

It is hypothesized by the RATE group that at some time in the past a much higher rate of radioisotope decay may have occurred leading to the production of large quantities of daughter products in a short period of time. It has been suggested that this increased decay rate could have been part of the rock-forming processes on the early earth and/or one of the results of God's judgments upon man following the Creation, i.e., the curse or during the Flood.

This last conclusion did not change over the course of the project. The RATE team went looking for instances in which radiometric dating did not work and, according to Vardiman, found them. In 2005, an anonymous article summarized the findings as follows:

Main summary points:

1. A large amount of radioactive decay has occurred.
2. Conventional radioisotope dates differ radically.
3. Nuclear processes were accelerated during certain periods of earth's history.
4. Helium diffusion and carbon-14 in diamonds is strong evidence for a young earth.

Eventually, the RATE team concluded their research in two volumes, totaling some 800 pages, costing $79.99. This set of volumes caught the attention of the American Scientific Affiliation, who waded in with a review that appeared in June of last year written by Randy Isaacs, the Executive Director of the ASA. He is scathing. He argues that the four areas in which the RATE project finds radioisotope dating to be wanting have been severely abused. He writes:

All of the four radioisotopic areas discussed involve aspects which the scientific community feels are not reliable for dating. Only one of the four areas discussed, helium diffusion in zircons, is claimed to yield a measurement of the age of the earth on the order of 6,000 years. This is merely a fitting parameter in a complex system of many unknown parameters. The other three areas all lead to ages much older than 6,000 years. The authors claim that the results cast doubt on standard dating techniques, making the young-earth scenario more credible.

About the rate of nuclear decay, he is a bit more forthright:

There is no direct evidence provided for accelerated decay. It is inferred solely from combining the evidence for massive decay with the young-earth position.

The RATE authors note that there is a significant problem with accelerated decay producing massive amounts of heat and radiation, but are convinced that a mechanism will be found for this and that these problems will be solved in the future. They, therefore, conclude that ther is encouraging support for the young-earth position. About this, Isaac writes:

The ASA does not take a position on issues when there is honest disagreement among Christians provided there is adherence to our statement of faith and to integrity in science. Accordingly, the ASA neither endorses nor opposes young-earth creationism which recognizes the possibility of a recent creation with appearance of age or which acknowledges the unresolved discrepancy between scientific data and a young-earth position. However, claims that scientific data affirm a young earth do not meet the criterion of integrity in science. Any portrayal of the RATE project as confirming scientific support for a young earth, contradicts the RATE project’s own admission of unresolved problems. The ASA can and does oppose such deception.

Read the whole thing.

Neandertal Tools As Good As Those of Early Modern Humans

Those studying the archaeology of both groups have known this for years. A story in the Independent is now making the public aware of it. It notes:

Scientists who spent years learning how to make replicas of the stone instruments used by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens have found the Neanderthal tools were just as efficient as anything made by Stone Age man.

And researchers believe that the demise of the Neanderthals – which has often been explained by the supposed inferiority of their technology – could not have come about solely as a result of their stone tools being worse than those of their rivals.

You have to gloss over the fact that early modern humans were also "stone age" and would remain so for another 30 to 70 thousand years, depending on where you were. This is one of the conundrums vexing researchers in Southwest Asia (the Near East). You have both Neandertals and early modern humans (barely) there and they are both using the same kinds of tools—the EXACT same kinds of tools. Modern humans didn't show up until possibly as early as 160 kya in North Africa (depending on how modern the Herto remains really are) and around 110 kya in SW Asia. The earliest modern tool assemblage, the Aurignacian, doesn't show up until around 43 kya in eastern Europe. SW Asian variants show up around the same time. These facts suggest to many that the relationship between the Neandertals and the early moderns was, shall we say, complex.

Fort Wayne Man Behind Methodists' Acceptance of Evolution

And even so, he said he is now at odds with his pastor and his bishop. The story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette relates the following:

Al Kuelling, 67, a retired engineer trained in physics, wrote two of three proposals on evolution adopted as church policy at the denomination’s 2008 quadrennial national conference this summer in Fort Worth, Texas.

The votes capped a yearslong quest by Kuelling to have the church explicitly recognize evolution as a legitimate foundation of science and acknowledge that it is not at odds with theology.

The votes on the two resolutions that passed weren't even close:

One of Kuelling’s proposals amends the Science and Technology section of the church’s Book of Discipline. It was approved by 80 percent of voting delegates.

It now states, in part: “We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology.”

The second proposal, which passed with 96 percent of the vote, was added to the church’s Book of Resolutions. It endorses The Clergy Letter Project led by David Zimmerman, an ecologist and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis.

The Clergy Letter Project can be found here. A third proposal opposed the teaching of creationism and ID in the public schools. I have already mentioned that one here. Maybe other denominations will follow suit. One can only hope.

Earliest Bipedality at 6 Mya

A study coming out of SUNY Stony Brook suggests that the earliest form of bipedality arose in hominids around 6 million years ago. The research incorporates the newest information from the Orrorin tugenensis material discovered in 2000. The story notes:

“This research solidifies the evidence that the human lineage split off as far back as six million years ago, that we share ancestry with Orrorin, and that our ancestors were walking upright at the time,” says Dr. Richmond. “These answers were not clear before this analysis.”

“Our study confirms that as early as six million years ago, basal hominins in Africa were already similar to later australopithecines in their anatomy and inferred locomotor biomechanics,” adds Dr. Jungers. “At the same time, by way of the analysis, we see no special phylogenetic connection between Orrorin and our own genus, Homo.”

This is something we always suspected—that bipedalism had to have arisen before the australopithecines hit the scene—but it is nice to have at least some evidence of this. It does not, however, shed any light on the relationship between this hominid and Sahelanthropus.

Texas Education Agency Responds to Chris Comer's Lawsuit

The TEA has responded to Chris Comer's lawsuit alleging wrongful dismissal from the agency. The Story in the Texas Observer reports:

The fatal flaw in Comer’s argument, according to TEA’s Motion to Dismiss (.pdf), “arises from a fundamental misconception of the relationship between the Texas Education Agency, headed by defendant Scott, and the State Board of Education.” The 15-member elected board of education develops curriculum, including what Texas schoolchildren learn about evolution, the motion states. TEA only administers that curriculum and provides oversight. “TEA staff, in their capacity as state employees, must not take positions, even by implication, on contested curriculum issues the State Board will be called upon to resolve,” the motion states.

So all of the power for the curriculum resides with the State Board of Education and none with the TEA? How does the SBOE have the power to restrict the free speech of the TEA members? Is that in the contract? If so, it is probably a violation of the First Amendment. What a bureaucratic nightmare.

Early Humans: "The Big Mac Burgers of Their Day."

Research is going on in an effort to determine what predators would have found early humans tasty. Apparently, the cast is large. According to a story in the Independent Online:

The problem, palaeontologists point out, is that at just a metre and a bit tall, our ancestors such as homo habilis were probably the Big Mac burgers of their day.

"We were cat food, we were not that special at that time. No armour, just meat on feet," said Dr Hannah O'Regan, a senior research officer in the School of Biological & Earth Sciences at John Moores University in Liverpool.

The remaining part of the article is devoted to C.K. "Bob" Brain's accumulation of evidence that Leopards were largely responsible for the hominid remains strewn about the landscape. An interesting read.

Yah, Who Didn't See This Coming

The frozen Bigfoot body that was touted as being proof of the existence of the creature is a hoax. That came after Searchingforbigfoot.com owner Tom Biscardi had already paid a handsome price for the chance to examine it. A thorough analysis of the body revealed that it was a carefully prepared rubber suit. According to a story in Foxnews:

Then came the clincher.

"Within the next hour of thaw, a break appeared up near the feet area. ... I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot." That jibes with what Jerry Parrino, owner of Internet Halloween-costume retailer TheHorrorDome.com, told FOXNews.com last week.

"It definitely looks like our [Sasquatch] costume," Parrino said after viewing photos of the body. The Biscardi team immediately went into crisis mode. Biscardi called Whitton and Dyer at their California hotel. They admitted it was a hoax and agreed to sign a promissory note at a meeting set for 8 a.m. Pacific time at the hotel.

Think they showed?

But when Biscardi got there, he "found that they had left."

There is enough intrigue to go around on this one. Now can we have a look at the Delk footprint, please?