Op zaterdag 25 maart 2023 om 03:10:38 UTC+1 schreef
peter2...@gmail.com:
Welcome to talk.origins, Marc!
I should warn you that almost all long-time regulars here are sufficiently savvy about science
to know the difference between hypotheses and "mostly settled science",
No, Peter, that's one of the problems.
The savanna idea is nonsense: they reason: in Africa you have rainforst & savanna: apes=QP in forest, human=BP on savanna.
But Pliocene Homo wasn't even in Africa!
Nor anywhere else, it seems. Pliocene ended by 2.58 mya.
IMO, Pliocene Homo followed the S-Asian coasts (where fossilisation chances were low??) ->early-Pleist.Java Mojokerto.
Less sure IMO is that late-Miocene hominids (Gorilla-Homo-Pan) lived in swamp forests of the (then incipient) Red Sea.
Francesca Mansfield thinks the Zanclean mega-flood 5.33 Ma opened the Red Sea into the Gulf:
-Pan went right ->E.Afr.coastal forests ->southern Rift ->Transvaal ->late-Pliocene africanus ->early-Pleist.robustus,
-Homo went left ->S.Asian coast ->early-Pleist.Java etc.
Gorilla 8 or 7 Ma followed the (incipient) northern Rift ->Afar ->Pliocene afarensis ->early-Pleist.boisei,
IOW, Pan & Gorilla evolved partly in parallel, e.g. knuckle-walking,
see e.g. my Hum.Evol.papers
--1994 Hum.Evol.9:121-139 "Australopithecines: ancestors of the African apes?" --1996 Hum.Evol.11:35-41 "Morphological distance between australopithecine, human and ape skulls"
IOW,
- African australopiths were fossil relatives of Pan or Gorilla,
- there was no "Out of Africa"!
They lived along S.Asian coasts -> early-Pleist.H.erectus on Java. Etc.
Homo habilis in Africa: 2.31 mya to 1.65 mya.
Homo erectus erectus (Java Man): est. ca 2.0 mya to 0.7 mya
Where's your Pliocene Homo?
Not found (yet??): low coastal fossilisation chances?
and bold claims
like the ones you make are enough to turn most of them off on whoever makes them.
That's true.
NOTE TO OTHER READERS: Marc is a long-time contributor to sci.anthropology.paleo,
and has started posting to sci.bio.paleontology as well. I've had pleasant discussions
with him about his heterodox theory about us being descended from aquatic apes.
No, not from aquatic apes!: from aquarboreal "apes".
The "aqua" part is a controversial minority opinion; arboreal is "practically settled science."
Unforunately, yes:
the majority opinion is still that our Pleistocene ancestors ran after antilopes over Afr.plains... :-D
Aquarboreal Mio-Pliocene Hominoidea = no doubt IMO: it explains e.g.
- very broad sternum & thorax & pelvis,
- tail loss,
- shorter lumbar spine, not dorsally but centrally-placed:
they were already bipedal (today only Hylobatidae & Homo still are) for --wading upright,
--climbing arms overhead in the branches above the water:
google "aquarboreal" (aqua=water, arbor=tree).
_____
On Friday, March 24, 2023 at 6:45:37 AM UTC-4, marc verhaegen wrote:
Yes: we've seen this in geology with "plate tectonics".
In light of what you next write, a much better choice of words would be "continental drift."
Yes, indeed.
For half a century it was even more heterodox than the Aquatic Ape theory is now.
Now we see this in anthropology with "coastal dispersal".
This is a more modest claim than the whole Aquatic Ape theory, and I hope
readers keep this distinction in mind if they respond to your posts.
OK.
Most paleo-anthropologists are still afro- & anthropo-centrically biased:
-- Homo didn't come from Africa, but from S-Asia,
This is your hypothesis and you need to start supporting it ASAP (As Soon As Possible).
See refs below, but it's obvious, e.g.
early-Pleistocene H.erectus (Mojokerto Java) was pachyosteosclerotic (POS):
POS is exlusively seen slow+shallow-diving tetrapod spp.
Reference, other than papers [co]-authored by you?
Probably the early PAs Dubois etc.?
The very short Wikipedia entry makes no mention of anthropoids, but it does have some
intriguing examples, especially the last:
Examples of animals showing pachyosteosclerosis are seacows[3] (dugongs and manatees), the extinct Plesiosauria and Mesosauria[2] and extinct aquatic sloths.[4]
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachyosteosclerosis
Those sloths are the closest to humans in external anatomy on the list, by far.
Have you ever made a comparative study? There is plenty of emphasis
in the long Wikipedia entry about their pachyosteosclerosis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassocnus
It's difficult to compare POS quantitatively, but qualitatively there's no doubt,
even early Pinnipedia & Cetacea were POS:
pachy-osteo-sclerotic "thick bone dense", no doubt for facilitating diving, also seen in aquatic reptiles etc.
Even their temporal span was close to that of hominini: 7-3 mya.
-- a[ustralo]piths were no human ancestors, but fossil relatives of Gorilla or Pan.
This hypothesis is extremely heterodox, although there is some circumstantial
evidence supporting it. Do you have any besides the utter dearth of fossils
that are generally recognized to be those of chimp and gorilla relatives?
I mean, of relatives that are closer to chimps and gorillas than to *Homo*?
Once again AFAIK only my own publications (esp. 1994 Hum.Evol.9:121-139 & 1996 Hum.Evol.11:35-41)
+ the opinion of the early discoverers, e.g. "-pithecus" = monkey/ape.
Miocene Hominoidea were already "bipedal" (wading-climbing, google "aquarboreal"):
IOW, there's nothing in apiths that's closer to Homo than to Pan or Gorilla
This was not heterodox: all early discoverers of australopiths thought they had found fossil "apes".
The word "ape" ranges over Homininae, and only excluded Homo back then by convention.
Java "man" was first called Pithecanthropus, and hence was called an ape.
Yes, Java Man is no ape, only still a bit apelike (brain c 800 cc).
An objective (= non-anthropocentric & non-afrocentric) approach is clear: -E.Afr.apiths are morphologically closer to Gorilla > Pan > Homo, -S.Afr.apiths are morphologically closer to Pan > Gorilla or Homo:
IOW, E & S.Afr.apiths evolved in parallel from late-Pliocene "gracile" to early-Pleist."robust":
afarensis->boisei // africanus->robustus.
But the reigning orthodoxy has them closer to human (Homo) ancestry than any known
Asiatic genus, including Gigantopithecus.
Yes, "reigning orthodoxy": can a whole schience be wrong? cf. continental drift?
Gigantopithecus was a fossil pongid-sivapith, also aquarboreal?
As you know, my view (hypothetically, very short):
-India approached S-Eurasia 30?25 Ma ->island archipels with coastal forests++ -Catarrhini reaching these island became "aquarboreal": broad build (Latisternalia), upright, tail loss etc.
-India underneath Asia c 20 Ma split Hylobatidae (SE.Asian coasts) & great"apes": W-Tethys coastal forests,
-the Mesopotamian Seaway closure c 15 Ma split pongids-sivapith (E) & hominids-dryopiths (W),
-late-Miocene Medit.Sea apes died out (heat? flood? cold?), only Red Sea hominids survived:
-Gorilla 8?7 Ma followed the incipient northern Rift ->Afar swamp forests: Lucy & other apiths,
-Red Sea opened into the Gulf (5.33 Ma?): Pan went right, Homo went left,
-Pan entered the southern Rift ->Transvaal swamp forests: Taung & other apiths (// Gorilla),
-Homo in S-Asia evolved from aquarboreal to frequent shallow-diving early-Pleist.?
--marc
CONCLUDED on Monday. On Saturdays and Sundays, I almost never post to Usenet.
Weekends are family quality & quantity time.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
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