# Fossil Dating of Common Ancestor of Humans and Chimps

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191>\
**Category:** Conversation\
**Tags:** Science\
**Created:** [February 10, 2021, 5:01pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191 "2021-02-10T17:01:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 7:57pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/61 "2021-02-19T19:57:02Z")

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> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> > [@Giltil](#):
> >
> > Did you read the book?
> 
> No. Nor does anyone here really want to spend money on creationist nonsense

I’am pretty sure that they are some open minded people here that may be interested to read this interesting thesis, if only to be able to criticize it better.

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**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/62 "2021-02-19T20:59:04Z")

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Well that was a nice copy-paste, Gil. “It’s a mix of bones” is of course a hilarious, but quite old creationist coping mechanism. Other creationists disagree and think they’re fully ape, and still others that they’re fully human. That kind of disagreement even among creationists is itself a piece of evidence that the fossils are genuinely transitional, which is why creationists must arbitrarily decide whether to classify it as fully one or the other.

Meanwhile, try to find the “kind” barrier separating these by insisting there’s too much change between them to have evolved over a period of 5-7 million years:

 ![where](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/2/2898d7c18551ee9ee1b74355ac338a6e5b3af0bd.jpeg)

While maintaining these belong to the same kind and evolved in less than 6000:

 ![same kind](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/d/dda06ea438c3fc1ee8182ebab33eb4869e65d3d1.png)

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**Author:** ![RonSewell](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/ronsewell/32/6194_2.png) [@RonSewell](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/RonSewell)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/63 "2021-02-19T20:59:06Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> I’am pretty sure that they are some open minded people here that may be interested to read this interesting thesis, if only to be able to criticize it better.

Is there some reason this interesting thesis cannot be published in a journal? I have little interest in purchasing and reading a book from two unqualified individuals which have not been subject to any level of peer review, even what passes for creationist peer review.

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**Author:** ![CrisprCAS9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/crisprcas9/32/9145_2.png) [@CrisprCAS9](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/CrisprCAS9)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/64 "2021-02-19T20:59:07Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> they conclude that Habilis and Sediba “are in fact a jumble of Homo and Australopithecus Bones”

So you’re telling me they are incompetent? Got it.

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**Author:** ![Joe\_Felsenstein](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/joe_felsenstein/32/8176_2.png) [@Joe\_Felsenstein](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Joe_Felsenstein)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/65 "2021-02-19T20:59:08Z")

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> [@thoughtful](#):
>
> I vaguely recall reading that each of us has about 3% Neanderthal in our genome, but when you look across the population, it’s actually around 60% of our genome. Does that ring any bells with anyone? I don’t remember what source I read that in - it wasn’t a creationist one.

One of the major papers on that was done by two excellent researchers in my department in Seattle, Josh Akey and his student Ben Vernot. (Josh is now at Princeton University and Ben is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig).

Note that it does _not_ mean that we are all mostly Neaderthal. Each of us of European or Asian ancestry carries maybe 2% of our DNA sequence of Neanderthal origin, but it varies as to which part.

[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6174/1017.long](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6174/1017.long)

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**Author:** ![Roy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/roy/32/3799_2.png) [@Roy](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Roy)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 10:09pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/66 "2021-02-19T22:09:38Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> It seems that the current situation in paleoantropology is that the various hominin species can’t be arranged into a coherent ape-to-man progression.

> [@Giltil](#):
>
> What I was asking for (maybe not clearly enough) is whether the fossil record is best explained by the Rupe & Sanford’s model (based on multiple branching trees) than by the traditional evolutionary narrative (based on a single tree with single common ancestor of ape and man).

As can be seen from the above quote, you weren’t asking anything, you were pronouncing judgment.

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 10:28pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/67 "2021-02-19T22:28:00Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> Hence their alternative model depicted in the figure I posted.

So, in other words, there is no actual data set behind the figure. One must also doubt whether either of the authors is competent enough in hominid paleontology to be able to construct any sort of data set for analysis. And you don’t seem competent enough to be able to tell whether they’ve even tried.

> [@Giltil](#):
>
> I’am pretty sure that they are some open minded people here

Only a committed creationist would be interested in a book that claims to show what we know from vast quantities of data (notably the molecular data you and they consistently ignore) that primates are related by common descent.

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**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 10:49pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/68 "2021-02-19T22:49:41Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> I’am pretty sure that they are some open minded people here that may be interested to read this interesting thesis, if only to be able to criticize it better.

Why? As a virologist, I know that Sanford can’t be counted on to know the difference between mutations and rearrangements, nor between strains and subtypes, in influenza virus. Why would I think he’d do any better with bones?

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**Author:** ![T\_aquaticus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/t_aquaticus/32/1249_2.png) [@T\_aquaticus](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/T_aquaticus)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 11:11pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/69 "2021-02-19T23:11:11Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> the genus Australopithecus or the genus Homo, the bones of the first genus being clearly ape-like (Australopithecus aferensis, Ardipithecus ramidus) and those of the second clearly human-like (Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis).

Oh really??

![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/7/79fb15e38802c2f0edb1e6d15bc2e8af5cdb2576.jpeg)  
[reference](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5949/71/tab-figures-data)

We have a human pelvis on the far left and a chimp pelvis on the far right. The two pelvises in the middle are Australopithecus and Ardipithecus. Are you seriously telling me that the two in the middle look more like the chimp pelvis than the human pelvis?

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**Author:** ![Dan\_Eastwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/dan_eastwood/32/2368_2.png) [@Dan\_Eastwood](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Dan_Eastwood)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 11:13pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/70 "2021-02-19T23:13:20Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> I find it odd that between two models, the one best suited to make accurate predictions may not offer a better explanation than the other, even if the latter would be simpler.

Models can be too complex, to the point where they start to conform to random noise (or the statistician’s bias!) more than any signal in the data. That’s all I meant to say.

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**Author:** ![Tim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/tim/32/9381_2.png) [@Tim](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Tim)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 2:53am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/71 "2021-02-20T02:53:02Z")

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> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> Models can be too complex, to the point where they start to conform to random noise (or the statistician’s bias!) more than any signal in the data. That’s all I meant to say.

Yes. Throw more explanatory variables at a statistical model, and you’ll get a better fit, even if those variables are irrelevant. Throw _enough_ variables, even if _all_ are irrelevant, and you can get a _perfect_ fit.

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 4:12pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/72 "2021-02-20T16:12:53Z")

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> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> So, in other words, there is no actual data set behind the figure

The figure is an alternative model based of the same data that many paleo-experts have unsuccessfully tried to force into an ape-to-man framework. What’s matter with this? Doesn’t their approach reminiscent to Darwin’s one with his « I think »?  
[https://images.app.goo.gl/58tSmKBCQhYmmhFb8](https://images.app.goo.gl/58tSmKBCQhYmmhFb8)

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 4:13pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/73 "2021-02-20T16:13:00Z")

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> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> Only a committed creationist would be interested in a book that claims to show what we know from vast quantities of data (notably the molecular data you and they consistently ignore) that primates are related by common descent

I am not a committed creationist so you’re wrong here.

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 4:13pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/74 "2021-02-20T16:13:10Z")

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> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Meanwhile, try to find the “kind” barrier separating these by insisting there’s too much change between them to have evolved over a period of 5-7 million years:

Are you saying that the fossil record allows for a convincing hypothesis for the origin of man, that there is a clear fossil trail supporting an ape-to-man progression?

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**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 4:29pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/75 "2021-02-20T16:29:55Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> The figure is an alternative model based of the same data that many paleo-experts have unsuccessfully tried to force into an ape-to-man framework.

I’m pretty certain that real experts are aware that man is an ape, so there would be no need for any “ape-to-man framework.”

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 5:14pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/76 "2021-02-20T17:14:14Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> The figure is an alternative model based of the same data that many paleo-experts have unsuccessfully tried to force into an ape-to-man framework. What’s matter with this? Doesn’t their approach reminiscent to Darwin’s one with his « I think »?

Darwin’s tree there was a purely hypothetical illustration of his idea of branching descent. It didn’t even represent any real taxa or data. I agree that their approach seems similar, though perhaps not in the way you intended. So can we now agree that Rupe & Sanford’s figure similarly had nothing to do with data?

> [@Giltil](#):
>
> I am not a committed creationist so you’re wrong here.

The evidence of your many posts here suggests otherwise.

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 5:29pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/77 "2021-02-20T17:29:49Z")

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> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> So can we now agree that Rupe & Sanford’s figure similarly had nothing to do with data?

No. They have the same data as everyone else.  
They simply interpret them differently than most paleo-experts.

> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> > [@Giltil](#):
> >
> > I am not a committed creationist so you’re wrong here.
> 
> The evidence of your many posts here suggests otherwise.

Evidence is sometimes misleading

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/78 "2021-02-20T17:55:21Z")

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> [@Giltil](#):
>
> No. They have the same data as everyone else.  
> They simply interpret them differently than most paleo-experts.

This is just you avoiding the subject. What data? How interpreted to create the figure? In real science, there would be a description, in the caption, of the analysis used. The fact that you can’t seem to find that description anywhere tells me what I need to know.

> [@Giltil](#):
>
> Evidence is sometimes misleading

Yes. We might as well ignore evidence entirely and just go with whatever fits most comfortably with our religious beliefs.

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/79 "2021-02-20T17:55:56Z")

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> [@Mercer](#):
>
> I’m pretty certain that real experts are aware that man is an ape, so there would be no need for any “ape-to-man framework.”

As you can see below, your self-confidence is unfounded.

_« No doubt about it, Australopithecines are like apes, and Homo group are like humans »_  
Leslie Aiello, Paleanthropologist of the University College London.

> **[How did humans evolve from apes?](https://www.newscientist.com/question/humans-evolve-apes/)**
>
> Many parents dread the moment when a child asks where they came from. Charles Darwin found the subject awkward too: On the Origin of Species makes almost no mention of human evolution.

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**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2021, 7:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/fossil-dating-of-common-ancestor-of-humans-and-chimps/13191/80 "2021-02-20T19:08:38Z")

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Quote mining and an article meant for laypeople does not say anything about the taxonomic awareness of the real experts.

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