By Babu G. Ranganathan
The problem with evolutionary news of fossil finds, like the recent discovery of Ardi, is that the public is given an impression in the popular media that all scientists agree with the evolutionary conclusions of such finds. The public is never, or very rarely, exposed to scientific disagreements. There are many assumptions and personal interpretations of the fossil evidence which are conveniently passed on by the media as scientific fact.
What we know of Ardi is that it is an extinct primate with all the features of an ape. But, it was a unique ape, not like any of the apes living today. Ardi had features found in various ape species. Ardi was a mosaic of various ape features, but it was still compeletely ape. No part of Ardi was in any transition to becoming human. Some evolutionists simply assume Ardi to be an ancestor of humans simply because it was a unique ape.
Institute for Creation Research science writer, Brian Thomas, makes some very insightful remarks about Ardi. Here are a few excerpts from his article "Did Humans Evolve from Ardi?"
"According to the researchers who found her, Ardi spent time as a human ancestor, based on their assumption that humans either evolved from her or some creature quite like her. “The Ar. ramidus fossils therefore provide novel insights into the anatomical structure of our elusive common ancestors with the African apes,” stated one of the Science papers, concluding that “Ar. ramidus implies that African apes are adaptive cul-de-sacs rather than stages in human emergence.”1 Another paper viewed Ardi as the source of a new model of hominid evolution:
Referential models based on extant African apes have dominated reconstructions of early human evolution since Darwin’s time…. Ardipithecus essentially falsifies such models, because extant apes are highly derived relative to our last common ancestors.2 Yet none of these statements carry meaning without the presupposition of evolution in general, and unless Ardipithecus is presumed to be an ancestor to man.
To place Ardi into human ancestry, as these authors insisted, creates more problems than it solves. For example, Ardipithecus' body structure shows no objective or undisputable transition toward uniquely human features. The authors themselves listed some of these differences: Humans have unique and interdependent sexual organs and reproductive biochemistry, unique feet, ankles and musculature, unique hip structure, unique teeth and crania, totally unique cognitive abilities, a distinct “gut structure,” upright walking, unique vocal apparatus, a “precipitous reduction of olfactory receptors,” mammary glands that retain a stable size, unadvertised female proceptivity, and an “unusually energy-thirsty brain.”3
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