Re: Birdbrain blog: Yet Another Missing Evolutionary Link

On Aug 13, 10:04 am, VoiceOfReason <papa_...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ron O wrote:
On Aug 13, 12:59 am, Kermit <unrestrained_h...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 12, 12:00 pm, Ron O <rokim...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Aug 12, 1:42 pm, Jason Spaceman <notrea...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

From the article:
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It has recently been discovered that Homo Habilis DID NOT evolve into
Homo Erectus as previously thought. Darwinian evolutionary biology
postulated that Homo Habilis evolved into Homo Erectus, the precurser
to modern man, but it has now come to light that the species lived
side-by-side for hundreds of thousands of years, making such evolution
highly unlikely.

Gee whiz. Why are there still monkeys? Why are there a lot of
species of monkeys? Why are there still great apes, why are there
still three extant different types of great apes? It must have been
impossible for us to have evolved from an ape like ancestor.

Such sound logic seems to have a few holes in it.

I don't know if there are any known cases of it, but the hypothesis
that is being shot down would be the case where one species H. habilis
evolves into another pretty different species without leaving any sub
populations behind or scattered around the earth. It would be a case
of sympatric speciation with the added extinction of the previous
species and would have to involve the entire population in all its
geographic distribution. H. habilis would also have to not have
evolve sub species or species more similar to itself than H. erectus
that survived the extinction of the parent habilis species. I doubt
that anyone thought this scenario very likely.

Has anyone admitted to actually believing such a scenario for the
evolution of H. erectus from H. habilis? I can't recall anyone
advocating such an unlikely scenario and I've been following human
evolution for over 30 years.

Ron Okimoto

Weren't some h. erectus fossils found in Java dated to 50,000 years
ago? By the time they found h. florensiensis, they were talking about
three other human species co-existing with home sap sap: the hobbit,
neanderthals, and h. erectus. It would seem to rather suggest that
homo habilis coexisted with at least some surviving populations of
homo erectus, whether or not the transition was h. erectus -> h,
habilis -> h. sapiens sapiens.

My hypothesis is that Birdnow is not a human, but an ass. While this
hypothesis is falsifiable in principle, the accumulating evidence is
pretty overwhelmingly in support of this model. It is difficult to
imagine what evidence at this point could indicate otherwise.

Kermit- Hide quoted text -

As far as I know the prevailing model for the majority of speciation
events is allopatric spciation. This just means that an isolated
population that is part of an existing species with a much wider
range, evolves into a new species. If it evolves into using a new
niche it can coexist with the parent species even after the new
species moves out into the same territory. If it is just better at
doing what the parent species did it can replace the parent species.
If the parent species has a wide distribution and multiple isolated
populations like the H. erectus ranging over most of the old world
including the Indonesian islands. The parent species can persists a
long time. They just might not make it for very long once the new
competition arrives.

I'm curious just how much "competition" actually occurred between
hominid species? The word competition makes it sound like they were
out there snagging fruit out of the other guy's hand. Is there any
evidence that species directly competed for food resources, or was it
more a case of one species being better adapted to a changing
environment than another?

Especially when it came to H sapiens versus Neanderthals, did the
sapiens actually drive Neanderthals to extinction by eating food that
the Neanderthals would have eaten if the sapiens hadn't been in town?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

It would be speculation. We have data indicating that the forests
were receding during this time. Habilis would have probably occupied
the forest margins, but it might have been competing with other great
apes for denser forested areas. It would have been more chimp like
than gorilla like. Two chimp species survived human occupation of
Africa, but the habilines didn't. Habilis is credited with pebble
tool technology while erectus tools were more sophisticated up to hand
axe technology. I can't imagine what erectus thought of habilis, but
if chimps are any indication, where they tried to occupy the same
territory they probably beat the heck out of each other. Gombe has
the incidence where the group split into two independent units. The
larger group systematically hunted the smaller group down and
eliminated them all even though they shared the same territory as a
single group for generations. Our ancestors were probably no more
willing to share than chimps.

Ron Okimoto


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Birdbrain blog: Yet Another Missing Evolutionary Link
    ... It has recently been discovered that Homo Habilis DID NOT evolve into ... Homo Erectus as previously thought. ... but it has now come to light that the species lived ... evolves into a new species. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • habilis and erectus side by side?
    ... Fossils Could Force Rethink of Human Evolution ... and coexisted with another early human species, ... H. habilis is the earliest known member of the genus Homo. ... erectus was the first human ancestor to resemble modern humans. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Birdbrain blog: Yet Another Missing Evolutionary Link
    ... It has recently been discovered that Homo Habilis DID NOT evolve into ... Homo Erectus as previously thought. ... but it has now come to light that the species lived ... evolves into a new species. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Birdbrain blog: Yet Another Missing Evolutionary Link
    ... It has recently been discovered that Homo Habilis DID NOT evolve into ... Homo Erectus as previously thought. ... but it has now come to light that the species lived ... evolves into a new species. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Birdbrain blog: Yet Another Missing Evolutionary Link
    ... It has recently been discovered that Homo Habilis DID NOT evolve into ... Homo Erectus as previously thought. ... but it has now come to light that the species lived ...
    (talk.origins)