Now This Is Interesting . . .
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 03:11PM 
According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post (Click here: Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans | Jerusalem Post), it seems like Lucy might not be my second cousin a gazillion times removed after all.
"Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that `Lucy' - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the `Robust hominids.' The specific structure found in Lucy also appears in a species called Australopithecus robustus. Prof. Yoel Rak and colleagues at the Sackler School of Medicine's department of anatomy and anthropology wrote, `The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor.' The robust hominids were discovered in southern Africa 69 years ago and are believed to have lived between 2 million and 1.2 million years ago. Their jaws and jaw muscles were adapted to the dry environment in which they lived. Rak and colleagues studied 146 mature primate bone specimens, including those from modern humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans and found that the `ramus element' of the mandible connecting the lower jaw to the skull is like that of the robust forms, therefore eliminating the possibility that Lucy and her kind are Man's direct ancestors. They should therefore, the Israeli researchers said, `be placed as the beginning of the branch that evolved in parallel to ours.'" Shucks! I'll guess I have to revise my family tree, again! At least I had an ancestor on the Mayflower! Seriously, as more and more work is done in genetics, the whole evolutionary hypothesis will eventually collapse. It probably won't change much however, because even if someone rises again from the dead, people still won't believe the gospel (cf. Luke 16:31)--that is unless and until God grants them faith and repentance. But is sure is interesting to watch the old "consensus" collapse as evidence of a common (and fairly recent) origin of man begins to mount.
Reader Comments (10)
That's why their theories are always evolving.
What then, is Lucy the ancestor of dispensationalists?
At least, some day, both will be extinct ... mere museum exhibits from a distant dispensation ... waaaaaaaaay back in the 1800s.
(Sorry, just in a feisty mood tonight!)
That's why their theories are always evolving. "
Yep. Everytime you discuss evolution with an atheist, you get the standard answer, "Scientific knowledge is always changing." When will Darwin's theory give up the ghost like the theory that the earth is flat?
Lucy is just another ape, like all the other apes out there. She was probably adapted to her environment, just like polar bears are adapted to theirs, but can still interbreed with grizzlies.
In short, we see a bunch of animals around the world that look the way they do because of the environment they're in at the time. It's obvious to everybody but the scientists, who can't realize the emperor doesn't have any clothes.
There are many reasons that scientists believe in common descent. Although in recent years this has become an increasingly complicated model to maintain, we cannot forget that some of our best Christian thinkers like Warfield and Lewis were evolutionists. There are some compelling evidences for evolution. Although I don't feel that it is the best explanation of the total body of data, not everyone who accepts evolution does so out of contempt for God.
There are a great number of Christians who accept evolution, and while we may prefer that they think like us, that is something we should persuade them to do, instead of just mocking them.
For those in the world, it doesn't matter whether they believe in common descent or alien directed panspermia. Our job isn't to judge them, but to tell them about Christ, and to use reason and logic to remove objections to faith in His saving work.
There may be a great number of Christians who accept evolution, but not a great number of Christian scientists who accept it. It's not a good scientific theory, and Warfield and Lewis weren't scientists.