limerick wrote:Scrap heap of bones is not an accurate way of describing the find, it was actually a fossilized remains. It could be more important than Lucy as this find is from 4.4 million years ago, whereas Lucy was from about 3.2 million years ago. The scientists involved in this project, worked on these remains for a painstaking 15 years, and had nothing to do with the 'Ida' debacle. In coming up with an impression with what the creature looked like, it takes a lot of study and comparison to other primates, previous and present. Just a question, what do ye guys actually think it is?
(no sarcam, or animosity is intended in this post
)
Not exactly, it was a heap of bones... Crushed to smithereens says the report...
"One problem is that some portions of Ardi's skeleton were found crushed nearly to smithereens and needed extensive digital reconstruction. "Tim [White] showed me pictures of the pelvis in the ground, and it looked like an Irish stew," says Walker. Indeed, looking at the evidence, different paleoanthropologists may have different interpretations of how Ardi moved or what she reveals about the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.
(Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, "Excavating Ardi: A New Piece for the Puzzle of Human Evolution," Time Magazine (October 1, 2009).)
The recent news report in Science recounts the same problems with the fossil:
But the team's excitement was tempered by the skeleton's terrible condition. The bones literally crumbled when touched. White called it road kill. And parts of the skeleton had been trampled and scattered into more than 100 fragments; the skull was crushed to 4 centimeters in height.
(Ann Gibbons, "A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled," Science, Vol. 326:36-40 (Oct. 2, 2009).)
National Geographic put it thus:
After Ardi died, her remains apparently were trampled down into mud by hippos and other passing herbivores. Millions of years later, erosion brought the badly crushed and distorted bones back to the surface. They were so fragile they would turn to dust at a touch. "
“Chalky”? “Squished”? “Badly crushed and distorted”? “Needed extensive digital reconstruction”? After all the media hype and overblown claims about importance of Ida, forgive me for having an initial reaction of skepticism. How far would you trust a “Rosetta stone” that was initially “crushed to smithereens” and “would turn to dust at a touch”?
Claims of bipedalism often depend upon precise measurements of the angles of key bones such as the pelvis, femur, and knee-bones. But if these bones were discovered in such a crushed, squished, etc. form, determining the precise contours of these bones might become a highly subjective exercise. I'm sure they spent a lot of time on their reconstructions (and it certainly sounds like they did) but at the end of the day, it's difficult to make solid claims about extremely unsolid bones.
Anyone for some Irish stew?"
Source: //
www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/key_bones ... fossi.html
