Where are all the apes leading up to humans?

How come there is no ape species more human like than chimps or bonobos? Why is there such a huge gap? You would expect to find living gradations of species leading up to human, right? There should be sub-humans and sub-sub-humans and sub-sub-sub humans walking around.Please don't post ad hoc explanations with no scientific evidence to back up it up.Saying they are not alive today because X reason without any scientific evidence to support it is not science, but a cheap cop out.

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Since you say that we should expect to find "living gradations of species leading up to human," it seems that you're aware of the extinct species leading up to human, and that what you're really asking is why they're extinct instead of still with us like chimps and bonobos.

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My own opinion is that there is insufficient evidence to provide any specific answers about why they went extinct. From Australopithicus afarensis and before all the way up to Homo neanderthalensis (Neaderthals), we can only speculate about the reasons for their extinction.

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But the same is true of most extinct species. Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? Was it the asteroid? A period of unusually active volcanoes? Increasing competition from mammals? A combination? We don't know.

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I am aware that there is a dispute about the hominid fossils and its interpretations.Don't take my word for it, let's read what the scientists say:Mark Ridley, Oxford, "...a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." New Scientist, June, 1981, p.831"The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man."John Reader (photo-journalist and author of "Missing Links"), "Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?" New Scientist, 26 March 1981, p. 802"A five million-year-old piece of bone that was thought to be a collarbone of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib, ...He [Dr. T. White] puts the incident on par with two other embarrassing [sic] faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig's tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or 'Piltdown Man,' the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the 'earliest Englishman'."The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone.'""Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether". Henry Gee?, Return to the Planet of the Apes?, Nature, Vol. 412, 12 July 2001, p. 131The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record.
R. A. Raff and T. C. Kaufman, Embryos, Genes and Evolution: The Developmental Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 34In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.
(Ridley, Mark, Who doubts evolution? New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831.The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.
Gould, Stephen J., ‘Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?’ Paleobiology, Vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127.The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’
Steven Jay Gould (Harvard University), Evolution’s erratic pace, Natural History 86(5):14, May 1977.Many evolutionary biologists since Darwin’s time, and even Darwin himself, have been struck by how few sequences of fossils have ever been found that clearly show a gradual, steady accumulation of small changes in evolutionary lineages. Instead, most fossil species appear suddenly, without transitional forms, in a layer of rock and persist essentially unchanged until disappearing from the record of rocks as suddenly as they appeared.
Campbell, et al., Biology Concepts and Connections, 3rd Ed., p 290, 2000.In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.
Dr. David M. Raup (U. of Chicago - Field Museum), Evolution and the Fossil Record, Science, Vol. 213 (July 17, 1981), p. 289.Dr. Richard Leakey?, discoverer of Skull 1470 (Homo habilis), one of world’s foremost paleo-anthropologists,said in a PBS documentary in 1990:
If pressed about man’s ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional specie to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving.Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether.
Henry Gee, Return to the Planet of the Apes, Nature, Vol. 412, 12 July 2001, p. 131.Unfortunately, the fossil record for hominids [the half-human pre-humans] and pongids [the ape family] is almost totally blank between four and eight million years ago - an irresistible tabula rasa [an erased tablet; a clean slate] on which to inscribe belief, preconception, and personal opinion.
A. Zihlman and J. Lowenstein, False Start of the Human Parade, in Natural History, August 1979, pp. 86, 88.The main problem in reconstructing the origins of man is lack of fossil evidence: all there is could be displayed on a dinner table.
New Scientist, 20 May, 1982.Perhaps one of the most revealing statements concerning the supposed evolution of human beings from apes was made during an interview of Dr. Richard Leakey after the discovery of Skull 1470. In an interview for the National Geographic Magazine he said:Scientific explanation is challenged on the basis of observation, not of whim or fancy. ‘Either we toss out this skull or we toss out our theories of early man,’ asserts anthropologist, [Dr.] Richard Leakey of this 2.8 million-year-old fossil, which he has tentatively identified as belonging to our own genus. ‘It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings. . . . (it) leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged in an orderly sequence of evolutionary change.’
National Geographic, June 1973, Vol. 143, No. 6, p. 819.Similar truth and confusion abounds amongst those who believe in the evolution of human beings.
The various australopithecines are, indeed, more different from both African Apes and humans in most features than these latter are from each other.
Dr. Charles E. Oxnard, Fossils, Teeth and Sex-New Perspectives on Human Evolution, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1987, p. 227There are not enough fossil records to answer when, where, and how Homo sapiens emerged.
Takahata, Molecular Anthropology, Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics, 1995, p. 355The australopithecines known over the last several decades Are now irrevocably removed from a place in the evolution of human bipedalism All this should make us wonder about the usual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks . . .
Charles Oxnard (Professor of anatomy and leading expert on australopithecine fossils), The Order of Man: A Biomathematical Anatomy of the Primates, 1984, p. 332.Most textbooks avoid showing comprehensive tables of the discovered human fossils - doing so exposes the contradictions.
James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard, 1999, p. 106.I find it quite funny that they all just so happen to be extinct. Evolutionists will give ad hoc explanations for why it is so. It's one of the many reasons why I doubt their evolution story.Edited by CrytoGod, : Spelling errors.

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Why should anyone bother about posting evidence to support their explanation when you start by positing something with no evidence to support your suggestion that there should be such a thing?

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Well, if this evolution story was true then it wouldn't be a surprise to find some sub human species walking around somewhere on the planet, correct? It would make a strong case for the evolution story if sub humans were walking around. But how convenient that they just so happened to be extinct. But humans are thriving and chimps and bonobos are extant. Why is that so? Evolutionists will just concoct some ad hoc explanation without any scientific evidence to back it up.

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There used to be more human-like apes but they are all now extinct.

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Why of course they just so happen to be extinct.

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Currently we are wiping out the other apes (e.g Oran Utan, Mountain Gorilla, etc.)

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Last I read we are preserving and protecting many ape species.

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Wrong. More species have become extinct than are currently in existence.
Most species have become extinct - there is no reason for our cousins to have been exempt from that.

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Scientific evidence for your claim please?

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They all once roamed this earth. But as with so many things, they no longer exist.

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Like dinosaurs, mammoths, and grandparents.

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Species go extinct.

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They all just so happened to be extinct. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.My grandparent is still alive.If species go extinct then why are there species still extant? I find it funny it is the supposed species leading up to humans are extinct.

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The fact that the critters you hint at are all extinct seems to pose little problem for evolutionary theory. In fact, it appears that it would be more astonishing for them to all be living than for them to all be extinct. Which answers your next question:

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Why is that? What scientific evidence is there that 99% of species have become extinct?

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What reasons are you looking for? Shouldn't evidence that they existed and evidence that they currently don't be sufficient to conclude that they are not alive today?

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I'm not looking for any particular reason. I'm looking for any explanation backed by scientific evidence. Speculation and assumptions is not scientific evidence.

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If what you're looking for is a reason for their extinction, then science has offered many. But it should be noted that no natural explanation of their extinction would invalidate the fact of evolution.

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Please post a reference that has scientific evidence to back it up.Edited by CrytoGod, : Spelling error.

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It's not actually that big, as gaps go.

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Actually, there is a huge gap between humans and its supposed closest ape relative in terms of biology, anatomy, physiology etc.The following website details the many major differences http://www.whyevolution.com/chimps.html

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Why?

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Why not? Evolutionists claim they are a reality.

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Well, I may not be able to achieve the high degree of intellectual rigor attained by creationists' explanation for everything ("An invisible man in the sky did it. By magic. Because he wanted to.") but there are certainly some highly suggestive facts available to us.

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First, it seems from the evidence that the earlier hominids were trying to fit into the same ecological niche as each other and as us. This must inevitably cause competition in which the better adapted would survive.

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We would expect increasing adaptation on theoretical grounds --- one does not just go overnight from being a well-adapted jungle ape to being a well-adapted tool-using biped with a preference for the plains --- and this is confirmed by the evidence. If intelligence accounts for our success (and can it be doubted?) then we have evidence for increasing intelligence as reflected both by increased encephalization and an increasingly sophisticated material culture.

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It would be our expectation, then, that the more intelligent, better adapted hominids would out-compete their less well-adapted competitors.

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To this we may add the observation from history that we have a grisly record of more technologically advanced races destroying less technologically advanced races, even though these were members of our own species and innately our intellectual equals. How much more likely is it then that we would have visited the same fate on members of other species that were our intellectual as well as our technological inferiors?

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In this connection we may note that the evidence shows that our species has driven a large number of other mammal species into extinction, and have failed to exterminate a large number of others only by a conscious attempt at species conservation.

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Based on the evidence, then, it is probably the case that more advanced hominids caused the extinction of less advanced hominids either indirectly by competition, directly through violence, or by some combination of the two.

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But if you can think of an alternative hypothesis, I await it with an open mind. Can we here your explanation of why autralopithecines, H. erectus, and H. habilis are no longer with us?

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If not, then I would suggest that if we have only one plausible explanation for their extinction, and as this explanation is eminently plausible, it is likely to be correct, subject of course to the usual scientific caveats about potential falsification by an increase in our store of evidence.

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It's just mere speculation. Anyone can conjure up a just-so story to explain something away. What I am asking for is scientific evidence to back up the story.Edited by CrytoGod, : No reason given.Edited by CrytoGod, : Spelling error.

It doesn't matter how old the quotes are if there are no more recent statements from scientists who say otherwise. Moreover not all the quotes are 30 years or older.If you claim they are lies or taken out of context then prove it.Scientists expected to find gradual transitions in the fossil record (hence the quotes).So evolutionists can't even use the sub humans became extinct explanation when there is no solid scientific evidence they existed. It is well known the fossil record doesn't support their story and that is why they conjured up the ad hoc explanation punctuated equilibrium to cover up their failed expectation.Evolution is a funny 'theory'. It explains everything with just-so stories and ad hoc explanations which means it explains nothing.Edited by CrytoGod, : Spelling error

I checked the context of the Gould quote and it wasn't taken out of context.

Okay, but I still don't see any scientific evidence the claim that 98% or 99% of all species have become extinct. Perhaps you may want to point out exactly where the scientific evidence can be found in your references? Thank you.

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But I don't think anyone who understands the DNA can possibly deny evolution. It's considered a fact verified in stunning detail via the genetic record: http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2010/05/100512131513.htm

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Theobald's conclusion has been rigorously challenged.Douglas Theobald’s Test Of Common Ancestry Ignores Common Design | Evolution NewsDouglas Theobald Tests Universal Common Ancestry by Refuting a Preposterous Null Hypothesis | Evolution NewsDNA analysis actually disproves the evolution story. Let's take a look at The Tree of Life shown by molecular phylogenetic analysis:Evolutionists often claim that universal common ancestry and the tree of life are established facts.This figure below from a leading textbook [George Johnson, Jonathan Losos, The Living World, Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008.] is typical.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/...-XehG8E/s1600/JohnsonTextTOL.JPGAccording to Dr. Jonathan Wells: " [Darwin] believed that the differences among modem species arose primarily through natural selection, or survival of the fittest, and he described the whole process as "descent with modification.""Biologists in the 1970's began testing Darwin's branching tree pattern by comparing molecules in various species. The more similar the molecules in two different species are, the more closely related they are presumed to be. At first, this approach seemed to confirm Darwin's tree of life. But as scientists compared more and more molecules, they found that different molecules yield conflicting results. The branching-tree pattern inferred from one molecule often contradicts the pattern obtained from another."What do evolutionists say?For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life, says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. [i]But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality," says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change. espite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most [[animal] phyla remained unresolved.
Antonis Rokas, Dirk Krueger, Sean B. Carroll, "Animal Evolution and the
Molecular Signature of Radiations Compressed in Time," Science, Vol. 310:1933-1938 (Dec. 23, 2005).Evolutionary bioinformatics specialist W. Ford Doolittle explains, Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.W. Ford Doolittle, "Phylogenetic Classification and the Universal Tree," Science, Vol. 284:2124-2128 (June 25, 1999)."[d]espite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most [a nimal] phyla remained unresolved."
- Antonis Rokas, Dirk Krueger, Sean B. Carroll, "Animal Evolution and the Molecular Signature of Radiations Compressed in Time," Science, Vol. 310:1933-1938 (Dec. 23, 2005). Just a moment...What about 'convergent evolution' on the DNA level?

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Convergent Evolution on the DNA level

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Evolutionists have found convergence on the DNA level which goes against their expectations because it is highly, highly, unlikely. This is found among whales and bats when it comes to echolocation. The ScienceDaily article reports that these similarities are not just phenotypic but extend down into the level of the gene sequences:

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"two new studies in the January 26th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, show that bats' and whales' remarkable ability and the high-frequency hearing it depends on are shared at a much deeper level than anyone would have anticipated -- all the way down to the molecular level"

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Convergent genetic evolution was said to be "surprising" under neo-Darwinian thinking, this article reports, "The discovery represents an unprecedented example of adaptive sequence convergence between two highly divergent groups and suggests that such convergence at the sequence level might be more common than scientists had suspected." The article continues:

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"The natural world is full of examples of species that have evolved similar characteristics independently, such as the tusks of elephants and walruses," said Stephen Rossiter of the University of London, an author on one of the studies. "However, it is generally assumed that most of these so-called convergent traits have arisen by different genes or different mutations. Our study shows that a complex trait -- echolocation -- has in fact evolved by identical genetic changes in bats and dolphins."

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[...]

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"We were surprised by the strength of support for convergence between these two groups of mammals and, related to this, by the sheer number of convergent changes in the coding DNA that we found," Rossiter said

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Likewise, a report by the same scientists in Current Biology called the finding "surprising":

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Only microbats and toothed whales have acquired sophisticated echolocation, indispensable for their orientation and foraging. Although the bat and whale biosonars originated independently and differ substantially in many aspects, we here report the surprising finding that the bottlenose dolphin, a toothed whale, is clustered with microbats in the gene tree constructed using protein sequences encoded by the hearing gene Prestin.

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(Ying Li, Zhen Liu, Peng Shi, and Jianzhi Zhang, "The hearing gene Prestin unites echolocating bats and whales," Current Biology, Vol. 20(2):R55-R56 (January, 2010) (internal citations removed).)

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Thus, the high unlikelihood of such convergent genetic evolution poses great problems for systematists who seek to reconstruct a tree of life because molecular systematic banks upon the assumption [or expectation] that genetic similarity is the result of common inheritance. In this case, however, common inheritance makes no sense:

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What could have caused the misplacement of dolphin to the bat clade in the prestin tree? Horizontal gene transfer, DNA contamination, gene paralogy, long-branch attraction, and biased amino acid frequencies are all unlikely. The only remaining reason is the convergence of the prestin sequences of echolocating bats and whales, likely resulting from a common selection for amino-acidaltering mutations that are beneficial to echolocation.

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(Ying Li, Zhen Liu, Peng Shi, and Jianzhi Zhang, "The hearing gene Prestin unites echolocating bats and whales," Current Biology, Vol. 20(2):R55-R56 (January, 2010) (internal citations removed).)

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A review of this research in Current Biology stated:

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Remarkably, prestin amino-acid sequences of echolocating dolphins have converged to resemble those of distantly related echolocating bats. ... Even more remarkable is the new finding that echolocating dolphins and porpoises show Prestin gene sequences that resemble those of echolocating bats. Whales and dolphins belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, and their closest living relatives may be hippopotamuses. Nevertheless, dolphins and porpoises share at least 14 derived amino acid sites in prestin with echolocating bats, including 10 shared with the highly specialised CF bats. Consequently, dolphins and porpoises form a sister group to CF bats in a phylogenetic analysis of prestin sequences (Figure 1). This finding is arguably one of the best examples of convergent molecular evolution discovered to date, and is exceptional because it is likely to be adaptive, driven by positive selection.

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(Gareth Jones, "Molecular Evolution: Gene Convergence in Echolocating Mammals," Current Biology, Vol. 20(2):R62-R64 (January, 2010) (internal citations removed).)

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Source http://www.evolutionnews.org/...n_design_in_bat_and_whale042 291.htmlThis is just a few of the many examples that disproves the evolution story.

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Some of our hominid cousins do survive in our DNA:

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Sorry, I don't have a pass to log in and don't plan on getting one anytime soon.

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No, why would I?

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Okay, so you're just gullible.

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We out competed them.

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Scientific evidence please?

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You didn't offer the same courtesy. Why would we expect to find sub-humans walking around?

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Because they supposedly existed? Oh, but of course they just so happened to be extinct... because humans out competed them according to you.Interesting story.

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The more I think about this, the sillier it seems.

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They were living where we wanted to live, using the resources that we wanted to use, hunting the game that we wanted to hunt and inhabiting the land that we wanted to cultivate, and they were our technological and intellectual inferiors. What is there about the history of our bloody and warlike species that makes you expect that for tens of thousands of years we'd have (in effect) established nature reserves for them, while visiting unrestrained war and death on members of our own species, and while driving dozens of other mammal species into extinction?

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Around these nature reserves --- are we to suppose? --- empires rose and fell, wave after wave of invaders came and fought and settled and were conquered in their turn, armies of thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands struggled for land, and all this time every culture that came into contact with H. erectus said "But we mustn't kill them and take their land. Because one day someone will invent the theory of evolution and then they will be seen as being of great scientific importance."

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I think not.

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It is obvious that they would be driven to extinction, because if nothing else got them, we would. So I think the explanatory burden is on you. Can you think up any plausible scenario at all under which they would have survived to the present day?

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Scientific evidence that supports your story please?

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There are many intermediate species that have become extinct through one of two processes: (1) they evolved into later species or (2) they were outcompeted by other species.

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Oh, riiiiiight they evolved to other species so that's why we don't see sub humans or they got outcompeted by other species.Scientific evidence please?

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Measured by DNA the gap between chimps and humans is about 2%, and this is similar to the gap between horses and zebras and donkeys.

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Actually, that has been challenged. Recent study shows it can be as low as 70% genome similarity. ZondagMoreover, A Study Reports a Whopping "23% of Our Genome" Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny
Study Reports a Whopping “23% of Our Genome” Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny | Evolution News

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Why?

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Can you show how the theory of evolution would predict this?

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Do you expect to see great great grandparents roaming the world? Their great great grandparents?

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Evolution is the change in the frequency distribution and composition of hereditary traits within breeding populations from generation to generation, in response to ecological challenges and opportunities.

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This necessarily means that evolution occurs over sequential generations. This predicts that intermediates would be found in ancestral populations rather than in current populations.

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If living sub human populations were walking around it would certainly give more credence to the evolution story. But of course, they just so happened to be extinct or they evolved. Whatever. But not even the fossil record supports their story as quoted by evolutionists.

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Age of references most certainly matters simply because our level of understanding changes over time. The most recent quote (which you posted twice) was Gee 2001 - congratulations on making it into this century, if only barely. Most of your copypasta PRATTs were from a time when a computer capable of keeping up with my laptop would fill rooms, if it existed at all.

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But if there is no new scientific evidence that contradicts it then the 'old' evidence is still valid. I have yet to read or hear any scientists recently who say the fossil record supports gradual evolution.

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I believe I have already done so. Please reread my response and tell me why I haven't proven it - show us your evidence.

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I believe you haven't.

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And in many cases they have.They have also found rapid change and stability of species over time. You oversimplify then nature of evolution, misrepresent how it works and then claim it to be false.

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This image has been shown before but how's this for gradual transitions? Show me where apes end and humans begin.

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What scientists endorses it? Is there a consensus among scientists of the interpretations of relationships of the fossils to one other? How do we know there are not hoaxes? Evolutionists have a history of presenting hoaxes as the 'missing link'?There are a bunch of other questions regarding it.I just go by what evolutionists have said and they say in essence the hominid fossil record is horrible and open to many different interpretations. That's not hard scientific evidence.

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This book rolls up a great deal of information from many papers, so if you'd like to see the papers containing the data he used there's a long list of references at the end beginning on page 45.

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I'm not trying to debate the percentage of extinct species with you, I just thought since you asked about it that you'd like to see some additional information. Is this somehow relevant to your contentions about human ancestry?

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I'm still not sure what question you're asking. Are you asking why the gap between chimps/bonobos and humans is so large? And if so, then if you do not accept that the extinct hominid species are related to us, why do you accept that chimps and bonobos are related to us when they resemble us even less?

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Also, you didn't give any indication whether you understood the explanation about the lack of evidence making it impossible to know in any specific way why a species went extinct. Did the explanation make sense?

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The Newman book provides models which is hypothetical at best. However I'm asking for hard scientific evidence for the claim that 98%+ of all species have become extinct.Evolutionists claim that 98%+ of species have become extinct in order for their evolution story to make sense. Since there so many gaps in the fossil record they assume the fossils of all the species are there but they just haven't discovered them yet. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.The explanation is just that... an explanation. Where is the scientific evidence to back it up?

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Precisely what are you willing to accept as "scientific evidence?" Do you expect Percy's reference to have a listing of all of the billions of species estimated to have existed on Earth throughout history? Do you require documentation of a specific fossil for every species that is believed to have ever existed, despite the fact that fossilization is an extremely rare event and many organisms (including bacteria and other single-celled organisms) simply do not leave fossils? Are you willing to accept a mathematical extrapolation from the number of known species from the fossil record? Given that the number is in fact an "estimate," will you immediately challenge the admitted imprecision of the number, even though it's likely to be accurate, regardless of Percy's response? Do you even understand the difference between precision and accuracy, or will you conflate the two in an attempt to "prove" that the imprecision of an estimate means it's somehow likely to be inaccurate in its entirety?

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What if only 90% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct? Would your argument change? Would it change at 80%? At 50%? Because even if it's an absurdly low number like 10%, we know that our hominid ancestors are all extinct, even though it's extremely unlikely to find evidence for a specific cause for the extinction of a specific species. Does the manner of extinction particularly matter when determining whether those hominid ancestors were actually the ancestors of modern humanity? Does it matter whether a branch of our ancient cousins were killed off in a natural disaster because they all lived in a single geographic area, or whether they were simply out-competed by a new branch of the family tree? What's the relevance?

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Is there some reason that you think that reversing the typical "if humans descended from apes, why are there still apes" argument into the equally vapid "if humans are descended from apes, why are all the human-ancestor apes extinct" is particularly clever? Why do you think that the Theory of Evolution requires ancestor species to survive to be contemporary with all of their descendants? By that logic, you should be asking "if birds descended from dinosaurs, why aren't there any dinosaurs living today?" After all, we don't see "sub-birds" and "sub-sub-birds" flapping their not-quite-flight-capable wings around today either. I wouldn't expect to, but for some reason you seem to. Why?

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I think empirical evidence is very strong scientific evidence as opposed to ad hoc explanations, just-so stories, assumptions, and speculations that evolutionists are fond of.Did Percy's reference have scientific evidence to back up the claim? I believe not.Yes, having the fossils would be really compelling scientific evidence.Would you accept the human population is 6,000 years old using mathematical population statistics? Probably not.I don't think it matters how they were extinct. However I think it matters to provide evidence to back up the evolutionists' story of how they were extinct.Evolutionists are really good story tellers. I'll give them that. Too bad they have no scientific evidence to back it up.Again, I find it very funny that they all just so happened to be extinct. It would be really compelling evidence to find some human like ape with primitive features and culture somewhere around the world. Ooooh but of course they all just so happened to be extinct.These days I don't know what evolution theory requires anymore if it requires anything. Evolution explains everything and therefore explains nothing. That's why evolution can't be falsified. No matter how much evidence contradicts it or shatters their expectations or predictions they will just give some ad hoc explanation or change their evolution story.For example, Junk DNA. It was expected or predicted:The amount of DNA in organisms, neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins wrote in 1976, is more than is strictly necessary for building them: A large fraction of the DNA is never translated into protein. From the point of view of the individual organism this seems paradoxical. If the ‘purpose’ of DNA is to supervise the building of bodies, it is surprising to find a large quantity of DNA which does no such thing. Biologists are racking their brains trying to think what useful task this apparently surplus DNA is doing. But from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves, there is no paradox. The true ‘purpose’ of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA. (The Selfish Gene, p. 47)Recent scientific evidence says otherwise:"Pseudogenes have long been labeled as "junk" DNA, failed copies of genes that arise during the evolution of genomes. However, recent results are challenging this moniker; indeed, some pseudogenes appear to harbor the potential to regulate their protein-coding cousins. Far from being silent relics, many pseudogenes are transcribed into RNA, some exhibiting a tissue-specific pattern of activation...." Pseudogenes: Pseudo-functional or key regulators in health and disease? "What was once considered "junk DNA" now holds the keys to many novel gene regulatory mechanisms..." The role of noncoding "junk DNA" in cardiovascular disease - PubMedOf course there are numerous more studies that shatters the "Junk DNA" myth. According to Jonathan Wells (received two Ph.D.s, one in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley) exposes the myth in his book aptly titled "The Myth of Junk DNA" http://www.mythofjunkdna.com/Or what about Morphological Stasis?Evolutionists didn't expect to find organisms to stay the same morphologically for millions and millions of years (supposedly) as shown with discoveries of "living fossils" and "amber fossils":Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. ...The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). Stephen J. Gould, "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p15Niles Eldredge remarked: In the context of Darwin’s own founding conceptions, and certainly from the perspective of the modern synthesis, living fossils are something of an enigma, if not an embarrassment. (Eldredge and Stanley p. 272)Peter Ward in his 1992 book terms living fossils evolutionary curiosities, more embarrassments to the theory of evolution than anything else. (p. 13)"The principal problem is morphological stasis. A theory is only as good as its predictions, and conventional neo-Darwinism, which claims to be a comprehensive explanation of evolutionary process, has failed to predict the widespread long-term morphological stasis now recognized as one of the most striking aspects of the fossil record." (Williamson, Peter G., "Morphological Stasis and Developmental Constraint: Real Problems for Neo-Darwinism," Nature, Vol. 294, 19 November 1981, p.214.)These are just a few of the many contradictions or shattered expectations that discredits the the evolution story.

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"How come there is no members of my family tree more like me than my cousins? Why is there such a huge gap? You would expect to find all of our shared ancestors like parents and grandparents and great-grandparents leading up to me, right? All of my family before me from my father to my grandfather to my great-great grandfather should be walking around."

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The fact that most of my ancestors are dead has no logical bearing on whether or not my cousins and second-cousins and other more distant relatives who still breathe are actually related to me.

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Why then do you believe that the ancestors of our species must be alive to prove our relation to the distant cousins of humanity that are alive today?

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Your analogy doesn't seem to make sense.I know my great... grandfather was human. I don't know if my ancestors going back many generations weren't human as believed by evolutionists. If these supposed sub human species existed it would give more credence to their claim. Ah but of course they are all extinct.

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So do you have any evidence that punctuated equilibrium is incorrect?

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I can't prove a negative, buddy. You should provide scientific evidence if you actually believe in PE.This should be good.Edited by CrytoGod, : Typos.

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Your position baffles me. Do you dispute the evidence that there once were creatures on this planet that fit into the gap between humans and chimpanzees? For example, do you dispute the existence or veracity of the "Lucy" skeleton, which has characteristics intermediate between humans and chimpanzees?

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"To complicate matters further, some researchers believe that the afarensis sample [Lucy] is really a mixture of [bones from] two separate species. The most convincing evidence for this is based on characteristics of the knee and elbow joints."”*Peter Andrews, "The Descent of Man," in New Scientist, 102:24 (1984)."Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world-renowned anatomists from England and the USA, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, showed that these creatures did not walk upright in human manner. Having studied the bones of these fossils for a period of 15 years thanks to grants from the British government, Lord Zuckerman and his team of five specialists reached the conclusion that australopithecines were only an ordinary species of ape, and were definitely not bipedal, although Zuckerman is an evolutionist himself."
186 Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, Toplinger Publications, New York, 1970, pp. 75-94In 1983, Jeremy Cherfas said that Lucy’s ankle bone (talus) tilts backward like a gorilla, instead of forward as in human beings who need it so to walk upright, and concluded that the differences between her and human beings are "unmistakable" (*J. Cherfas, New Scientist, (97:172 [1982])."A new theory states that the genus Australopithecus is not the root of the human race . The results arrived at by the only woman authorized to examine St W573 are different from the normal theories regarding mankind's ancestors: this destroys the hominid family tree. Large primates, considered the ancestors of man, have been removed from the equation of this family tree . Australopithecus and Homo (human) species do not appear on the same branch. Man's direct ancestors are still waiting to be discovered."
Isabelle Bourdial, "Adieu Lucy," Science et Vie, May 1999, no. 980, pp. 52-62.“His Lordship’s [Sir Solly Zuckerman’s] scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution. ”They are just bloody apes,’ he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa.” Lewin, Bones of Contention, pp. 164-165.Edited by CrytoGod, : addition

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You're asking for scientific evidence that our species fights wars for territory?

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Have you spent your life in a cave or something? How come you have internet access?

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I am asking for scientific evidence for the claims why they are extinct.
Is there anything wrong with asking for scientific evidence?

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They definitely existed, the fossil record is full of 'em. The question is, why did they go extinct. I'd still be interested to hear your explanation, if you have one. Does it involve magic in some way?

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You believe they exist however there is no hard scientific evidence they ever existed. The fossil record surely doesn't support it. Scientists have said it themselves.

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Not that interesting, because it's so bleedin' obvious.

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Now, perhaps you could answer my question, and construct any scenario under which they would have survived. How would we not have competed with them and won?

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If apes are still alive today then why not the half human-apes? Oh of course. They became extinct because of competition. Evolutionists say it so it must be true. Forget scientific evidence to back it. Let's just believe their stories.