"If I descended from an ape, how come apes are still here?"

Not sure if all these fossils look all that different. On what basis are you determining that these fossils are all different from modern man?If you took the fossil of a 19 year old man and compared it with the fossil of a 60 year old man what differences would you see?If you were to extrapolate that difference to people who could potentially live till they were 800 years old what might you see? I am not suggesting that anyone could live 800 years but you never know what happened in the past right?

Biologically 800 years old is ridiculous and yes we do know what happened in the past. Please provide some sort of(any) support for any being living 800 years. Animal not plant.Mel Brooks is not evidence.Even if people could live to 800 years why do you think there would be some sort of skeletal difference? Please discuss the differences you would see. What do you think we would see? Do you think they would be as different as a fossil of ergaster is from sapiens? Please describe the differences you perceive.Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

If you want a closer look at many of these skulls then the Smithsonian has many of them available for viewing as digitised 3d models. For example skull J, the Neanderthal skull from La Ferrassie, can be found at http://humanorigins.si.edu/...lection/la-ferrassie-1-cranium .It is pretty cool.TTFN,WK

The same way that you determine that dogs are different than modern humans: differences in morphology. You would not see drastically reduced cranium size, more pronounced prognathus (jaw jutting forward), larger brow ridges, or the numerous other differences that separate transitional hominids and modern humans. You tell us. This is your fantasy, not ours.

I think what you meant to say was that you yourself have no idea what happened in the past, and you cling to your ignorance so that you can imagine it's possible that the bible stories are true. What you are experiencing is called cognitive dissonance. You know that science tells us things that show not all the bible stories can be true, so you are searching for some straw to grasp that will let you save both science and the bible.On some level, this is a good thing. It means you may not be willing to just throw science away completely. Thus, you seek a way, any way, to try to reconcile science with all the bible stories. If you keep looking, you will find that this cannot be done. You will then be faced with a choice; which to believe, the bible or science. So why don't we just cut to the chase. Since science shows that the bible stories cannot all be true, which one will you discard, science or the bible stories?I don't expect you to answer this question now. I don't think you are ready to yet. I'm just giving you a hint of what lies down the road, getting your mind prepared to face the inevitable. If you decide you don't want to face this question, you need to stop looking in the direction you are going. This question is at the end of the road you are on now, and cannot be avoided except through deliberate refusal to accept facts laid plainly before you. And if all you are going to do is refuse to accept facts, there's really no reason to keep searching for them, is there?

Paleontologists, physical anthropologists and several other specialties deal with this topic. Both fossil man and human osteology were subjects I studied for my Ph.D. exams. I can assure you that your cursory look at those pictures differs drastically from what specialists do when they look at these skulls. Specialists have detailed knowledge of the anatomy and morphology involved, and will have looked at thousands of skulls and skull fragments of a wide range of species.Believe it or not, experts in these fields actually know something! I'll not detail the kinds of things you would expect, but between those two ages you give you would expect to see differences in dentition (3rd molar), suture closure, and age-related degeneration. These changes are all well known and can be found in standard text books. Extrapolating the age-related changes we are familiar with, by age 800 you would have something approximating a jellyfish. No that is not right. By studying ancient bones and fossils, archaeologists and paleontologists have a good idea of what happened in the past.

The "they're very old people" is an old (and rather silly) creationist "explanation" for Neanderthals. Who are rather closer to modern humans (probably a subspecies) than most of those listed...(How they dealt with Neanderthal children I don't know, Were we supposed to think that they were hundreds of years old ?)

Hi Big_Al35 Of course they don't, especially as you go from one to the next: that is the point. What you are seeing is the modified traits in the skulls of hominids and the traits shared with the oldest skull are observed with many shared traits, and with the progress of the derived traits - especially with the front of the face becoming flatter and the back of the skull becoming bigger. We also see changes to the jaw and the teeth. These traits all make a slow progression from B to N. That's because these are all ape skulls, and they are all homininae skulls, including A (the chimpanzee). Because they are all in the same clade we expect similarities, and we also expect a gradual transition from more ancient to more modern. On the basis of detailed measurements made on the skulls in question (and others that match the various species shown). I'm sure Coyote could go into further detail on the changing aspects of each of the particular parts that make up the skull.If you look at the angle of the front of the face and compare B to N you should see noticeable differences. I would expect to see very little difference to the overall structure, but some differences where the bones come together, and changes in the proportions of bone to cartilage.Most of the difference would be observed in the teeth, with wear on the molars and loss of teeth with age. Why would a two point extrapolation be valid when there is a whole spectrum of data available? If we looked at the available data for the shape of a human skull from infant to 100 year old, we would see a lot of changes in the early years, with the degree of change becoming less and less as we reached greater age. From 60 to 100 there is very little overall change (with good health - and you are assuming good health for your mythical people yes?). Extrapolating that as an exponential curve we would expect a skull 8 times older than the last data point to be fairly similar to it.We would not expect teeth to become more robust and larger with age. What we know from the fossils is that it is rare for a skull to be from an individual older than 40 years old. We also know that there is no known evidence of fossil skulls from 100 year old individuals.Enjoy.

Perhaps it would help to put something over the bones to help non-experts see the differences. This is a recreation of H. erectus: The differences are a very large lower jaw, the large gap between the bottom of the nose and the top lip, lack of a protruding chin, very large eyebrow ridges, lack of a forehead, and smaller cranium. This is not an anatomically modern human. Those differences are not related to age.

Funny, because evidence shows that humans who manage to live beyond 110 begin to grow new teeth.

No, it doesn't.

Evidential link

Your evidence is...

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Serious dude - it just came on local TV news here in West Bengal, India. They even showed an interview of the family of this lady.

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a second-hand report of a TV show? And how come you're ignoring the much-more reasonable explanation by the original poster:

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Both my parents are dental surgeons and I asked them about it - what my dad says is that there's this situation called impacted tooth - where the tooth had come out in the normal cycle - but never managed to make it way out of the jawbones through the gum. Teeth like these remain hidden for extensively long periods - sometimes they never come out.. and sometimes they just pop-out one fine day, at a very late age.

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So, no. Old people don't start to regenerate teeth.

Hi again growing extra teeth

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• i am 14 and have 4 teeth behind my adult teeth ...
• ... i attended my 154th dentist appointment by the time i was 9 and that was when they told me that i had three sets of teeth. ...
• ... In my early teens I then grew a complete third set, ...
• I myself have three sets of teeth: one baby, two adult (a trait I inherited from my father). Because of it my second set (first set of adult teeth) were forced through early and, due to the lack of space in my mouth, I had a LOT of teeth removed. I'm 18 now ...
• ... When she was 60+ years old, her teeth started falling out. They decided the best thing to do was pull the rest and give her dentures. Thing is, one or two grew back in. The dentist continued pulling teeth, and more kept coming. At the end of the day (or year as it may be), he ended up pulling an entire third set.
• My 41 year old husband is on his third set of teeth, and dental x-rays reveal another set below the present teeth. ...
• I'm 18 and have had many dental problems ... studying the progress of my brace in the mirror I discovered that, along my bottom jaw, I appear to have a third set of every tooth (except for my incisors) growing.
• When I was about twelve I started losing my teeth. I was terrified until I found that a third set was growing in. ...
• I believe my extra set of teeth was also inherited paternally. When I grew them, some 45 years ago, ...
• When I was 13 years old and going into ortho, my x-rays showed a third set of permanent teeth. However, the were upside down. ... These rare teeth are referred to as "Mesiodens" -- more commonly known as "Supernumerary Teeth." My father, who is a dentist, had explained to me this phenomena. ... There is a myth that it is a sign of royalty that dates back hundreds of years ago.
• My father had three complete sets of teeth, with four sets in the canines. I have had three sets in the upper canines, which have grown in two at a time - ...
• I'm 25/f and I also had an extra set of permanent top teeth. ...
• I have also had an extra set of top teeth! ... I am now 37
• ... My little brother (age 8 at the time) was found to have an extra permanent front tooth. ...
• When I was 20 and in the Air Force, I had a third set of teeth growing ...

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Looks like this condition is not relegated to extreme old age, as you claimed, but can occur at any age.Hyperdontia - Wikipedia

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Hyperdontia is the condition of having supernumerary teeth, or teeth which appear in addition to the regular number of teeth.

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There is evidence of hereditary factors along with some evidence of environmental factors leading to this condition. Many supernumerary teeth never erupt, but they may delay eruption of nearby teeth or cause other dental problems. Molar-type extra teeth are the rarest form. Dental X-rays are often used to diagnose Hyperdontia.

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It is suggested that supernumerary teeth develop from a second tooth bud arising from the dental lamina near the regular tooth bud or possibly from splitting the regular tooth bud itself. Supernumerary teeth in deciduous (baby) teeth are less common than in permanent teeth.

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And it appears to be a rare developmental disorder, whether caused by environmental factors or hereditary is uncertain.Curiously, we do not see these teeth becoming more robust and larger with age -- my original point -- and you need a significant size increase in some teeth to match the early fossil skulls (particularly canines?)Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : subtitle

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