Missing link? Ardipithecus Ramidus

Ardipithecus Ramidus is very interesting, & a good example of trying to manipulate data to prove a theory, rather than letting the data speak for itself. There certainly is no overwhelming evidence for many of the claims & assumptions made by the discoverers of these fossils.
1. the dating is circular. It was found in strata that is assumed to be 4.4 M yrs old.
2. The conclusions are still a matter of debate, as many assumptions are made, & gaps are filled with speculation. The papers from 'Science' published in 2009 had 'probably' 78 times, & forms of 'suggest' 117 times. These are speculative guesses, not anything that can be construed as proven science.

"Is Ardipithecus a hominin?—that question will likely dominate the paleoanthropological debate over this fossil taxon for years to come." source

So even with the debate over these fossils not having any consensus within the evolutionary community, evolutionists are quick to trumpet this as a 'transitional species'. That is a pretty bold move, & smells more of desperation & bluff, rather than anything 'scientific'. All you have is an extinct apelike creature. You do not have a complete fossil skeleton, yet they make dogmatic assertions about this find, based completely on assumed dating & fitting it into the evolutionary timeline. This is not proof of anything, except the desperation of evolutionists, & the yearnings of researchers to make a name for themselves.

Not all paleoanthropologists are convinced that Ar. ramidus was our ancestor or even a hominin.  source




Here is the assumed drawing and the actual fossils. So many liberties have been taken, & assumptions made, i am surprised any self respecting scientists would go along with this fantasy.  I see no compelling reason to embrace evolution on account of this fossil. It is NOT a transitional species, definitively. It can be imagined as such, but that is speculation.

Do you see the same face as the drawing? It seems pretty plain to me the skull of the creature was much more protruded, rather than flat faced like a human. This is artistic license, used for propaganda, not science.

In 1992, the Middle Awash Research Team, co-led by [Tim] White, made a discovery that ended Lucy’s reign. About 75 kilometers south of Lucy’s resting place, at Aramis in the Afar depression of Ethiopia, the team found fossils of a chimp-sized ape dated to about 4.4 million years ago. … The team named this species Ardipithecus ramidus, drawing on two words from the Afar language suggesting that it was humanity’s root species. But skeptics argue that the published fossils are so chimplike that they may represent the long-lost ancestor of the chimp, not human, lineage. 

The next field season, team member Yohannes Haile-Selassie found the first of more than 100 fragments that make up about half of a single skeleton of this species, including a pelvis, leg, ankle and foot bones, wrist and hand bones, a lower jaw with teeth—and a skull. But in the past 8 years no details have been published on this skeleton. Why the delay? In part because the bones are so soft and crushed that preparing them requires a Herculean effort, says White. The skull is “squished,” he says, “and the bone is so chalky that when I clean an edge it erodes, so I have to mold every one of the broken pieces to reconstruct it.” The team hopes to publish in a year or so, and White claims that the skeleton is worth the wait, calling it a “phenomenal individual” that will be the “Rosetta stone for understanding bipedalism.” (Ann Gibbons, “In Search of the First Hominids,” Science, 295:1214-1219 (February 15, 2002).)

Now, for 15 yrs the researchers rebuilt & filled in the gaps of the skeleton with their assumptions, & polish the findings so it would be hailed as a groundbreaking discovery of human evolution. Instead of releasing their findings as they found them, we have manipulated data.. polishing the research & releasing only what they want to produce the desired effect. This is finely tuned propaganda, not peer reviewed science.

What about Neanderthals?

for a long time paleoanthropologists have viewed Neanderthals as too dull and too clumsy to use efficient tools, never mind organize a hunt and divvy up the game. Fact is, this site, along with others across Europe and in Asia, is helping overturn the familiar conception of Neanderthals as dumb brutes. Recent studies suggest they were imaginative enough to carve artful objects and perhaps clever enough to invent a language.
for a long time paleoanthropologists have viewed Neanderthals as too dull and too clumsy to use efficient tools, never mind organize a hunt and divvy up the game. Fact is, this site, along with others across Europe and in Asia, is helping overturn the familiar conception of Neanderthals as dumb brutes. Recent studies suggest they were imaginative enough to carve artful objects and perhaps clever enough to invent a language.

Neanderthals, traditionally designated Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, were not only “human” but also, it turns out, more “modern” than scientists previously allowed. “In the minds of the European anthropologists who first studied them, Neanderthals were the embodiment of primitive humans, subhumans if you will,” says Fred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at LoyolaUniversity in Chicago who has been studying Neanderthal DNA. “They were believed to be scavengers who made primitive tools and were incapable of language or symbolic thought.”Now, he says, researchers believe that Neanderthals “were highly intelligent, able to adapt to a wide variety of ecologicalzones, and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so. They were quite accomplished.” source

Neanderthals were human. They buried their dead, used tools, had a complex social structure, employed language, and played musical instruments. Neanderthal anatomy differences are extremely minor and can be for the most part explained as a result of a genetically isolated people that lived a rigorous life in a harsh, cold climate. source

Since drawing about 60% of neanderthal dna, a lot has been discovered about them.

• They interbred with homo sapien. ~ 2 Billion people have neanderthal genes in them.. mostly european & asian. What does this tell us? They were the same species. Separate species cannot interbreed. They were merely a 'tribe' of humans that had unique physical features.. like many tribes today. Their genetic 'line' can be traced. They did not evolve separately, nor were they a distinct hominid species. They just 'looked different' than whatever normal 'homo sapiens' looked like.

This was a problem for those in the evolution field.
“We were suspicious of the result,” Reich says. “We found signals of mixture and then worked very hard to make them go away.”
He tried for a year, to no avail. Finally, Reich and his colleagues had no choice but to conclude that Neanderthals had mated with humans. They estimated that the DNA of living Asians and Europeans was (on average) 2.5 percent Neanderthal. source

We are spoon fed these kinds of images from infancy..


They are the result of a creative mind, but not anything that can be called science. Evolutionists are so desperate to validate their 'theory' that the fall victim too easily to any scammer or self seeking con man looking to make a name for himself. Instead of trying to force the data into the theory, why not try something novel? Use the scientific method. Let the data speak for itself, rather than distorting it into some philosophical propaganda.