Orrorin tugenensis

Orrorin tugenensis Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 14:28:54 -0600 From:

Reply-To: NOdtgEMAIL Organization: whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies Newsgroups: sci.anthropology, sci.geo.geology, sci.bio.paleontology

One of the nice features of living in the tristate region where Iowa, Nebraska borders South Dakota is that I can get all three PBS stations and if I want to see a program again, I can.

This time I was able to jot down the names of the leading researchers. Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut. They have done outstanding work and probably have the earliest known hominid of Orrorin dated 6 million years ago. They however lack a major piece of evidence of Orrorin. Perhaps due to oversight or sloppiness. They failed to make a detailed analysis that Orrorin was a stonethrower. I am going to presume that both Martin and Brigitte are too biased and prejudicial to redo their study of Orrorin sites and make the analysis of whether Orrorin was indeed a stonethrower.

And watching the program for a second time I was able to jot down the Savannah hypothesis of bipedalism. It goes like this: Africa was covered with dense forests in the Miocene but near the end of the Miocene the lands become uplifted and the forests disappearing into savannah. And so, bipedalism by the resident pre-Orrorin was a direct response to getting out of dense forests and into

Where have you seen this behavior introduced into a population of anything non-human?

Did these quadrupeds somehow carry the stones they threw or just depend on finding good, throwable stones along their way? I'm sure you've thrown enough to understand that not every stone one throws flies true.

Did these quadrupeds that threw stones actually hit anything? What evidence do you have that they did?

Based on what, exactly? 'Highly progressed in meat eating', like carnassials? Here's a clue for you, flat molars are really only good for eating meat if you cook it first.

So I would guess that Orrorin type fossils will be

You suppose that stone throwing would be immediately successful enough to provide a meat-rich diet, and then use teeth you claim to show evidence of meat eating as evidence of stone throwing. Way to chase your tail there, Einstein.

I would be willing to bet that the average human is better at throwing than the better hominids were, and far better than any quadruped could ever hope to be. I would be willing to bet that given a pile of good rocks for throwing, the average human couldn't kill enough meat to live on. So why would you expect anyone to believe that a quadruped was good enough at it to be selected for over non- stone throwing quadrupeds? I'm sure you've seen chimps 'throwing' sticks etc. Do you really think a full blown quadruped could throw stones