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Personally, this is interesting because it confirms a hunch, that all those scenarios declaring man began to walk upright when the land dried up to grassy Savannahs was essentially a myth based on very little actual evidence.
But not knowing all the details of molecular dating of the theorized divergence with human/chimp ancestors, I wonder if this new discovery affects that in anyway? Anyone know here?
Sciecntists make speculative reconstructions based on the available evidence. To call such reconstructions "myths" is to fail to understand what is going on. (And even ignores the article which explicitly describes the idea as speculation). Of course speculative ideas can be wrong, but this evidence (and by that I mean the hominid fossils) isn't conclusive either.
And no, it doesn't affect the molecular dating in any way. How could it ?. It does confirm that the human and chimps lineages had diverged by the time of the fossil specimens but that's no surprise at all. THe article tells us that the fossils were 500,000 years old and that the divergence was 5-8 million years ago. How could the fossils affect the molecular dates ?
This message has been edited by PaulK, 09-03-2005 03:10 AM
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