Why are there no human apes alive today?

It is no more bullshit than your species definition with its plethora of inconsistency. You asked for a definition of kind, I provided one.You do not have to like it!

It's not a matter of like or dislike, what you posted has absolutely no informational content, it tells us nothing, it is totally empty and worthless as a definition.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

EVERY skull pictured is from an ape. They are all from members of the ape family.You are clearly still failing to grasp the definition of the word "ape".What parts of the 7 posts in which this is explained to you did you fail to understand? So now aboriginies are human? What changed your mind.Here's a skull from an Australian Abo, go ahead and point out the brow ridge. In contrast, here's Erectus, just so you can match up your claims: Can you tell the difference? And neanderthal: Again, see the difference?Now, I'll grant you, in a world in which horses and cows are the exact same species since "Duh, they look alike to me", these skulls are hard to tell apart.

Right, 2 legged kind - Humans, birds, kangaroos
4 legged kind - Dogs, Cows, Lizards (and grasshoppers according to the Bible)
Many Legged kind - all bugs except grasshoppersThis is SUPER easy. No wonder Creationists want it taught in school. You can get 12 years of education done in an hour and a half.

Except that your definition of kind explains absolutely nothing whatsoever.Every question posed to this definition gets the same answer: "Duh, I dunno, God is magic".That's useless.

So, you wish to put your arbitrary line between I and J (something you would have to dispute with most other creationists, who would put it earlier in the sequence).And yet the difference between I and J is less than the difference between I and A or B. So it seems that according to your arbitrary classification, there are some apes that are more like humans than they are like other apes.And the existence of intermediate forms like this is always going to screw up creationist attempts at pigeonholing. Well, that's hilarious. Apparently you wish to locate the creationists' supposedly unbridgeable gap between ape and human between two individuals so anatomically similar that they are sometimes thought to be the same species. It seems that you are trying to tell some lie about Turkana boy, but your incoherence is impeding your mendacity.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Okay. How exactly do you determine one kind from another?Here, lets try some examples. Could you tell me which of the following are different kinds and which are the same?1. A dog and a wolf. 2. A macaw and a cockatoo. 3. Vibrio cholerae and E. coli 4. A termite and a cockroach 5. A tiger and a cheetah What standard or method do you use to determine kinds, and how specifically do you use that standard or method to determine whether something is (by your definition) an ape or a human being?Edited by ZenMonkey, : Couldn't spell "macaw."

Remember, according to the Bible stories, a dove and a raven are two different "kinds".The "kinds" idea is just plain ***.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Hi Mazzy,I think I understand your position now. You're focused on extinction because you think the missing intermediates aren't missing because they haven't been found yet. You think they're missing because they never existed. This explains why you're arguing that had they really existed they would not have gone extinct because you reject competition as a factor. It is usually not possible to know what factors were in play to cause an extinction, and all it means to say a species was out-competed is that they produced too few offspring for each succeeding generation, and eventually they produced no offspring at all. There are other factors besides competition. For example, all members of a species with a small geographic range might be wiped out in a disaster like a flood or volcano.But the important point is that we don't classify humans as apes because of missing intermediates. We classify humans as apes because of shared morphology and genetics. The evolutionary relationships we've established with chimps, gorillas and other apes as well as extinct hominid species have only cemented our confidence in this classification, About Turkana boy being human, the other image I provided of the skull clearly shows that it is very similar to the Homo erectus skull you provided. here are the images again with Homo erectus on the left and Turkana boy in the middle. I've included a human skull on the right for comparison: The braincase and brow ridge of Homo erectus and Turkana boy are an extremely good match. A large part of the central portion of the Turkana boy brow ridge has broken off and is missing, but if you click on the image to enlarge it you can clearly see how similar it is to the Homo erectus skull, and how different they both are from the human skullEven just this cursory examination of these two skulls reveals that they are far more similar to each other than to a human skull. It is unlikely in the extreme that Turkana boy could be human while Homo erectus is not. Gee, and they have such nice things to say about you. If the winner of a debate is who can be most denigrating then I'd say you have a chance. The evidence suggests the relatedness of all life, not just man and other apes (the word is "irks").--Percy

Actually the match may be even better than it appears.Turkana boy is estimated to be less than 10 years of age. Even allowing for differing rates of maturity in the distant past it is extremely likely that the full adult features had not yet developed. These are just the features that are exaggerated in Homo erectus in relation to H. sapiens.I think that Mazzy is being fooled by the more gracile features of a sub-adult.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You are just too kind, Coyote.I doubt Mazzy would consider your input.Mazzy has been fooled by blind obedience to a religious creed and the uncritical accptance of its creation fairytale.Mazzy has been caught in lies, had references debunked and been shown copious sets of facts contrary to his/her/its spurious claims all to no avail.The st*pid is strong with this one.

Scientists don't just give names to every new variation. We go through a rigorous process in the naming of new species. We don't just spot a different colored dog and call it a new species of horse. We use morphologies and homologies and DNA to determine relatedness. We use parsimony in determining that it wouldn't make sense to say we are more closely related to the dog than we are to the chimpanzee. Our bone structure is closer to the chimpanzee than the dog by a long shot. If you would take a look at a dogs paw and a chimpanzees hand or foot, you should be able to see that our hand/foot more closely resembles the chimpanzees, even with the obvious differences. This comparison (complemented by DNA analysis where possible) is used in determining the relatedness of all species.If we look at the skull bones of Homo Heidelbergensis, specifically just for this example, we see that it has some similarities with our own skulls and some differences. (We call these homologies, or traits shared between two species and their common ancestor, and homoplasies, or traits shared between two species but not seen in the common ancestor. We further divide homologies into those that are shared derived and those that are ancestral.) Their brain size in relation to their body size is within the range of H. Sapeins. They share some derived traits such as a higher forehead, more vertical sides, and more rounded back. But they also retain some primitive features such as the massive browridges, occipital torus, thick skull bones, longer and lower skull, and no chin.If we compare H. Erectus with H. Sapiens, we find fewer shared derived traits (than we share with H. Heidelbergensis) and see that H. Erectus has retained more ancestral traits than we do. Which traits Iv'e already discussed.And so on. Each Hominid species shows these mix of homologies and homoplasies and from these we infer relationships. Either to a closer relationship or one less related. The more primitive traits and fewer shared traits with us that a Homonid has, the farther away from us in evolution but NOT necessarily in time. When we speak of ancestors we are speaking of our relationships, and like our relationships with our parents, they are likely to still be around the same time we are. At teh risk of confusing you, as you seem intent on picturing scientists as a monolithic entity, there remains even today a debate about how we classify H. Erectus, Neanderthals, Ergaster, etc. You share some ideas with the Multiregionalists such as M. Wolpoff, and some that are your own. Wolpoff would classify Ergaster and Erectus as both being H. Sapiens, along with Neanderthals and Heidelbergensis. And there is nothing wrong with holding such a view as long as you can support it with scientific data. A point should be made as well that Some scientists disagree with the addition of Ergaster and would rather they remain labeled as Erectus. Whatever the disagreements on the taxonomies and evolutionary trees the scientists all agree on one thing: Evolution is a fact. You continue to have a misapprehension of what would constitute a new species. To be a species it has to be capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. Since fat humans are still capable of breeding with skinny ones, they remain H. Sapiens. If, over time, it comes about that fat humans are then incapable of producing fertile offspring with skinnier ones, then their classification may be changed. If we are incapable of determining whether a species could breed with another, especially considering they might have been extinct for a very long time and no evidence suggests they could or would have, then we catalog each of their traits and from there go through the rigorous process of placing them on the phylogenetic tree. My answers above should answer your statement here. I've no wish to repeat myself in the same post and this point has been discussed before; so I hope you would have read and attempted to understand what I've written thus far. Some of them existed ALONGSIDE humans as recently as 18 kya. Whether it was humans who caused their extinction or the fact that they were geographically isolated and some catastrophy or ecological change wiped them out is up for debate.Some species are more geographically limited and it would take only a regional catastrophy to cause their extinction. Case in point are the Gorillas and chimpanzees. It would take less to cause their extinction than it would for baboons.Humans exist on ALL continents. The remains of other hominin species has currently been found in a more limited geographic range. It isn't so difficult to infer that a species that has a lower technological achievement, lower brainsize, and smaller geographic range would have difficulties competing with another species in a similar ecological niche. That we might have interbreed with some of them, shows how we might have also absorbed them into our own species at the same time we were competing with them.The point remains that having a sister species around or not does NOT negate the Fact of evolution, nor does it refute the Theory. It is indeed sad that we don't have more extant Homonin species around. It would have helped us tremendously with all our questions.Edited by DBlevins, : added the word 'answer' to sentence.

And yet Mazzy would still find a way to deny it.

Considering that we have adult crania from the same region and within the timeframe for ergaster that show distinct difference from erectus (see KNM-ER 3733), and the almost complete lack of Mode 2 tools associated with erectus fossils, it isn't a stretch to infer a different species. Specifically the lack of a sagital keel in ergaster vice erectus; the less pronounced occipital torus in ergaster; the thicker skull and more pronounced browridges and much steeper slope of the sides of the skull of erectus. Even the H. Erectus finds that have been dated more recently appear to retain more ancient traits than H. Eregaster specimens from 1 mya.I think it would be a mistake to project that the growth patterns of the juvenile skull would be from adult skulls when they are so far apart regionally and considering that we have remains that are much closer.

You are correct. I was responding to the ideas presented by Mazzy above: It is interesting that Mazzy sees Turkana boy as human and ergaster, while other ergasters and some of their descendants (erectus) are seen as apes. And floresiensis also!I think that Mazzy is being fooled by the sub-adult development of Turkana boy. Without any knowledge of the anatomy and the skulls there is nothing to base one's opinions on but overall appearances and a priori beliefs.