Re: CRSQ: "Was Lucy Bipedal?"


NashtOn wrote:
Harlequin wrote:
chris.linthompson@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Harlequin wrote:
Marvin L. Lubenow published a short article called "Was Lucy Bipedal?"
<snip>



This is priceless. A bunch of evocheerleaders getting together to
discuss something they know nothing about.

And your reply is worthless; a bitter rant dismissing hard facts, which
are well understood. What's the point - to affirm the impression you
give that you do not understand the scientific process; that reality
for you is not that which we can touch and measure, but what gives you
emotional satisfaction?


Firstly, the question IMV isn't whether Lucy was bipedal,

It may not be the only question, nor the most important, but it is
important if we want to fully understand the process of the origin of
species - especially ours. Your dismissal of the very question itself
indicates that it is not knowledge you seek.

but rather,
whether A. afarensis preferred bipedalism and to what degree for its
ambulation ,

And you think the way the animal is built offers no clue to its
prefered mode of ambulation?

as opposed to any other form of locomotion. Obviously, this
we will never know, since this monkey is extinct.

Your use of monkey shows your contempt for knowledge, once again. There
are many things we can know with a reasonable degree of confidence. The
way animals moved, given their skeletons, is one of those things.

Modern day primates
are also bipedal at times, but do not use this method of ambulation for
the most part and are considered quadrupedal.

<shrug> Most of the primates *I know prefer bipedalism.


Secondly, what is the significance of this fact towards proving that A.
afarensis is an "ancestor" of modern day humans.

Obviously, if we are bipedal and our remote ancestors were not, then at
some point their were more recent ancestors who adapted to abipedalism.
Are you being disingenuous here? You must be, or you would have been
too dense to ask this question.

This, we will never
know either and all we can do is speculate on the matter.

There is a vast gulf between "absolutely certain" and "wild
speculation". Pretty much everything we believe to be true, in fact.

The only fact
that proves that afarensis is more human-like than ape-like

Who said this? (Assuming by "ape" you meant "apes who aren't hominid")
What is more human than ape? Where is the yardstick, what metrics are
used?

are
morphological studies (Wilfred le Gros Clark) and not infantile
blabbering of the type "the foot bone connected to the knee-bone, the
knee-bone..."

What's the difference? If by "infantile blathering" you meant
"analyzing the implications of the morphology". You call yourself a
physical therapist, and yet you hold the consequences of the features
of bodies to be both unknowable and trivial.


The site you mentioned is a joke, nothing more, nothing less. You can't
prove bipedalism by a few anatomical features such as " the inside bump
of the knee aligns vertically with the outside bump of the femur at the
hip joint."

Your epistemological niilism is noted.


What is striking and paradoxical, is that A. afarensis' upper body has a
morphology suited for arboreal living.

Is this a vision from God, or do you have cites? If you have sources, I
hope they didn't use morphological features to conclude this, for you
have established (by te irrefutable argument of repeated assertions)
that we can't come to any conclusions from their skeletal features.

One of the tenants of the ToE as
it pertains to Man s the fact that when our "ancestors" adopted
bipedalism, this occurred mainly because of the fact that they were
drifting away from arboreal living, so to speak.

Well, yeah. One question would be why.

How can you have an
animal that is supposedly bipedal, yet maintain it arboreal morphology
where it really counts, i.e. its upper body?

I climb trees. What morphological features do you reference from which
you conclude they were primarily aboreal?


Lastly, gait is a complex phenomenon and I don't think its relevant to
the debate of whether A. afarensis is a human precursor or not, since
all modern primates have skeleton suited for bipedalism, but aren't
what's considered bipedal in the same way as humans.

Most of the skeletons I've seen were considered to be those of bipeds,
whenever the subject came up. If you mean our cousins the chimps and
bonobos, they are quadrupeds. Of course they can walk on they back
legs, awkwardly and for short distances. So can my neighbor's dog.

I find this
extremely disingenuous from the part of evolutionary "scientists" to
throw bipedalism into the fray, when morphology alone is really the only
information we have in order to extrapolate the relationship between
afarensis and humans.

Lucy asked that her diary be kept private, and we are respecting her
wishes. In the meanwhile, we'll have to use what's available. So we
can't conclude much except except ambulation, eating, rough estimate of
intelligence, etc.

Just another element of pure, unadulterated
speculation that is another reason why I personally consider
evolutionary "science"a crock.

Yes, you know it's so because you said so.


I'd be happy to discuss the phenomenon of gait with whomever wishes to
do so, BTW since I am highly trained in its analysis.

Trained how? Apparently in your universe the features of the body have
nothing to do with its movement. Perhaps you read the tarot deck for
your patients.

Here's a school that offers training in physical therapy:
http://physicaltherapy.wustl.edu/pt/pt.nsf/WV/23F277A74AA47A9086256AE0005A979F?OpenDocument

In the Second semester they offer:
"Human Anatomy
Emphasis is on 1) musculoskeletal, neural, and vascular systems of the
extremities, head, neck, and trunk, and 2) anatomical features relevant
to current physical therapy practice. Lectures are complemented by
student-performed dissection of human cadavers, instructor-prepared
prosections, and computer assisted instruction."

Did you not get past the first semester? Perhaps you could give us an
email address for your old anatomy teacher, and one of us could ask him
or her what he thought of the possibility that an animal's skeleton
tells us something reliable about how it moved.

I googled "physical therapy" and "anatomical features" and got over 800
hits.

--
Nicolas

<snip author and lawyer>
Kermit

.