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Showing posts from October, 2009

'Ardi' Hardly Shapes Up

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Ardipithecus again Photo: Suwa, et al., Science 326 (5949), 2 October 2009, DOI: 10.1126/science.1175825. Ardipithecus ramidus skull. It seems that the latest round of papers published represent painstaking efforts to establish its anatomical parameters as precisely as possible. But such a heavily fragmented, incomplete skull, for example, leaves a lot of room for speculation and interpreter bias. Its brain volume was estimated to be even smaller than that of a chimp. A recycled ape-man by Carl Wieland Published: 5 October 2009(GMT+10) The papers and news sites are full of claims about what some still think is a “new” candidate for an evolutionary ancestor of humans. Called Ardipithecus ramidus (often just “Ardi”), most of the articles actually explain that it’s really a detailed reanalysis of a fossil category that’s been around for years, but still the phones run hot with concerned creationists or gloating skeptics. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the journalistic temptati