Obviously when you think about it - these changes must have happned from Australopithecus to erectus not before because this creature has a brain the size of a chimpanzee.
I think this is where your argument falls flat. The paper is talking about 20-25 million years (about half the time the "Age of Mammals" has run). You are stating that "obviously" the authors
actually meant the ~6+/-1 million years since the lineages that led to us and chimps diverged. In fact, the timeframe the authors cite falls square into the middle of the range of where the apes and old world monkeys may have diverged (23.8 - 35 mya, see Kumar S,
et al, 2005,
Placing confidence limits on the molecular age of the human-chimpanzee divergence, PNAS 102:18842-18847).
You're not allowed to change the research - only argue that their conclusions are incorrect. And IF you are going to so argue, you need to show
why. It's unlikely anyone is going just to take your word for it.
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