Dr. Charles E. Oxnard,
formerly Professor of Anatomy and Biological Sciences, University of Southern
California, now Professor of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western
Australia, in.Fossils,
Teeth and Sex—New Perspectives on Human Evolution, University of Washington
Press, Seattle and London, 1987, p. 227."In
each case although initial studies suggest that the fossils are similar
to humans, or at the worst intermediate between humans and African apes,
study of the complete evidence readily shows that the reality is otherwise.
These fossils clearly differ more from both humans and African apes, than
do these two living groups from each other. The australopithecines
are unique. The various australopithecines are, indeed, more different
from both African apes and humans in most features than these latter are
from each other. Part of the basis of this acceptance has been the fact
that even opposing investigators have found these large differences as
they too, used techniques and research designs that were less biased by
prior notions as to what the fossils might have been....In this case also,
most of the new studies have come from laboratories independent of those
representing individuals who have found the fossils."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
John Reader, photo-journalist
and author of.Missing
Links: Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?.New
Scientist Magazine.(newscientist.com/),
March 26, 1981, p. 802.."The
entire
hominid
collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, but it has
spawned a science because it is distinguished by two factors
which inflate its apparent.relevance
far beyond its merits.
First, the fossils hint at the ancestry
of a supremely self-important animal—ourselves. Secondly, the collection
is so tantalizingly incomplete and the specimens themselves often so fragmentary
and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about
what is present. Hence the amazing quantity of literature on the subject.
Very few fossils indeed afford just one, incontrovertible
interpretation of their evolutionary significance. Most are capable of
supporting several interpretations. Different authorities are free to stress
different features with equal validity,
often placing remarkable emphasis on the form they propose for the bits
that are missing. Points distinguishing the various interpretations may
be so slight or unclear that each depends as much upon the proponent's.preconceived.notions
as upon the evidence of the fossil. Furthermore, since the meagre
collection has accumulated so slowly, the long gaps between discoveries
have provided ample time for investigators to form very definite notions
of what ought to be found next. 'Zinjanthropus boisei'.(later
reclassified
Australopithecus
boisei), is a good example of this
phenomenon,
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
led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Dr. Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer
in Population Biology, Flinders University, Adelaide, in an address on
the case for evolution given at a meeting of the Biology Teachers' Association,
South Australia, in 1976.."...
not being a paleontologist,
I don't want to pour too much scorn
on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones
and finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there's
a very strong desire there to exaggerate
the importance of those fragments..."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
A five million year old piece
of bone that was thought to be the collarbone of a human-like creature
is actually part of a dolphin rib, according to an anthropologist at the
University of California-Berkeley.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Dr Tim White, anthropologist,
University of California, Berkeley. As quoted by Ian Anderson in article
'Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin's rib', in.New
Scientist.(newscientist.com/),
April 28, 1983, p. 199..Dr
Tim White says the discovery of the blunder may force a rethink of theories
about when the line of man's ancestors separated from that of the apes.
He puts the incident on a par with two other embarassing.(sic).'faux
pas'.(a
social blunder).by
fossil hunters:.'Hesperopithecus',
the fossil pig's tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in
North America and Eoanthropus'.('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.
