Bernard Wood asks “Did early homo migrate into or out of Africa?” (Science June 17, 2011):
The origin of our own genus remains frustratingly unclear. Although many of my colleagues are agreed regarding the “what”with respect to Homo, there is no consensus as to the “how” and “when” questions. Until relatively recently, most paleoanthropologists (including the writer) assumed Africa was the answer to the “where” question, but in a little more than a decade discoveries at two sites beyond Africa, one at Dmanisi in Georgia and the other at Liang Bua on the island of Flores, have called this assumption into question.
Meanwhile, Anne Gibbons asks, Who was homo habilis? And was it really homo? (Science June 17, 2011):
As new H. habilis fossils emerged over the decades, the researchers and others came to consider the species the first member of our own genus, a crucial ancestor that gave rise to H. erectus in an unbroken lineage that led to us. But in the past decade, the handyman’s status has been undermined. Newer analytical methods suggested that H. habilis matured and moved less like a human and more like an australopithecine, such as the famous partial skeleton of Lucy. Now, a report in press in the Journal of Human Evolution finds that H. habilis’s dietary range was also more like Lucy’s than that of H. erectus, which many consider the first fully human species to walk the earth.
Strange how Darwinian evolutionists need to find the “first fully human species to walk the earth.”
It would seem a reasonable obsession for some. But in their view, is there any such thing? Isn’t it all just a total continuum with the amoeba?
This is all great fun. But isn’t school meant for stuff we’re pretty sure of? Sine. Cosine. Tangent. When experts disagree … ?
No wonder Creation-Evolution Headlines advises “Avoid Confusion: Disbelieve Paleoanthropologists (June 28, 2011).