Australopithecus. Donald Johanson in his book "Lucy" refers to the "australopithecine mess" - and it definitely is that. The very word Australopithecus means "southern ape" because the first fossils were found in South Africa by Dr. Raymond Dart, professor of anatomy at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.
Dart was convinced that some teeth were man-like and thus concluded it represented a transitional between apes and man. His opinions on the matter were largely scorned by the scientists of his time (1924) who considered it nothing more than a chimpanzee. The skull was soon known derisively as "Dart's baby". Perhaps no one has studied the australopithecines more than Sir Solly Zuckerman who wrote: "Evolution as a Process" in 1954: "There is indeed no question which the australopithecine skull resembles when placed side by side with specimens of humans and living ape skulls. It is the ape so much so that only detailed and close scrutiny can reveal any difference between modern ape and Australopithecus."
Australopithecus afarensis. Commonly know as "LUCY" - Discovered in 1974 by Donald Johanson was a half complete skeleton he named after the Beetle's song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". A year later 13 more similar skeletons were found. Remarkably the skull was even more ape-like than other australopithecines.
In his book "Lucy, The beginnings of Human Kind," Johanson said: I had no problem with Lucy. She was so odd that there was no question about her not being human. She simply wasn't. She was too little. Her brain was way too small and her jaw was the wrong shape. Her teeth pointed away from the human condition and back in the direction of apes. The jaws had the same primitive features."
On the basis of a hip and knee joint found later, however, Johnson "decided" that Lucy did walk in an upright bipedal fashion. He thus deduced Lucy was an ancestor of man, as well as an ancestor of A. africanus (the original Australopithecus).
However, there are conflicting reports as to whether Lucy did actually walk upright. The following quote was taken from The Institute for Creation Research web-site.
"The features which suggest upright posture to Johanson are primarily the hip and knee joints, but numerous studies on the hip have shown otherwise. Oxnard, in his 1987 book, Fossils, Teeth and Sex (which contains an excellent summary of these various studies), claims that, "These fossils clearly differ more from both humans and African apes than do these living groups from each other. The australopithecines are unique" (p. 227). Evidently they could walk somewhat upright, as pygmy chimps do today, but not in the human manner at all". To top
Homo habilis. The taxon Homo habilis had an illegitimate birth when Mary Leakey discovered some badly shattered skull fragments in 1959. Her husband Louis made the comment that it was nothing more than a "damned australopithecine". His attitude soon changed however when he found stone tools near the site of Homo habilis. Jumping into the fire, he quickly named it Homo and publicized the find widely. He was soon discredited when other australopithecines were found in Africa, also with stone tools. Homo habilis was "demoted" to australopithecine. This didn't stop Leakey though. In 1964, he found four more specimens in Olduvai Gorge. These he claimed had bigger brains than Australopithecus and surely deserved to be classified as Homo habilis. Measurements of the cranial capacity were nearly impossible since the skulls were so badly crushed but, nonetheless, it was concluded that they averaged 642 cc's, or 200 cc's larger than Australopithecus and he considered that enough to make them Homo.
Not everyone was as enthusiastic as Leakey was about his new "handymen". Homo habilis was soon considered an empty taxon that was inadequately proposed.
New life was breathed into Homo habilis by Louis and Mary's son, Richard Leakey who was working in the Lake Rudolf area in Kenya. Leakey found numerous stone tools and 40 specimens of Australopithecus. Then, in 1972, he he made a discovery that was to shake the world of paleo-anthropology to it's foundations. He found the toolmaker his father had long sought in vain. Perhaps he found even more than he bargained for. He found several fossilized bone fragments of a skull which his wife Meave carefully assembled to make a nearly complete skull minus the lower jaw. The skull was named KNMER 1470 for its registration at the Kenya National Museum in East Rudolf.
The skull capacity was difficult to measure because of the condition of the assemblage but was estimated to be 800 cc's (later lowered to 750 cc's), much larger than so called ape-men skulls. There were only small eyebrow ridges, no crest and a domed skull typical of humans today. Indeed it appeared to be a human skull. Professor A. Cave who first demonstrated that Neanderthal man was completely human examined 1470 in London and concluded: "As far as I can see, typically human". In addition, Leakey found 2 complete femurs, a part of a third femur and parts of a tibia and fibula near the skull which he said "cannot be readily distinguished from Homo-sapien."
Let's talk about the dating of 1470. In 1969 samples of KBS tuft from just above the layer in which 1470 was found was sent to Cambridge University for potassium argon dating. Three different test gave an age of 220 million years old +or- 7 million years ! This was considered unacceptable for for this strata given its fossil content, so the errors were blamed on "extraneous" argon. Several more tests were done, and the best, most acceptable date was placed at 2.61 million years old. In National Geographic of June 1973 Richard Leakey stated," Either we toss out the 1470 skull or we toss out all our theories of early man. It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings. 1470 leaves in ruin the notion that all early fossils can be arranged in an orderly sequence of evolutionary changes."
What was the problem? The problem, given the age of 2.61 myo, made 1470 contemporaneous with Australopithecus, if not older - yet looked identical to modern man. This absolutely unseated Australopithecus as ancestor of modern man!
In later lectures, Richard Leakey never made reference to 1470, preferring perhaps, to sweep it under the rug. However, in a PBS documentary in 1990 he stated, "If pressed about man's ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional specie to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving." This from the world's foremost paleo-anthropologist !
...never question my dinner date......understand...??
