Re: AAT is dogma

Gerrit Hanenburg (ghanenbu@inter.nl.net)
Mon, 14 Aug 1995 19:13:52 GMT

fisher@ivy.dt.navy.mil (Steven Fisher) wrote:

>> And so, a question for proponents of the AAT: what would it take to
>> falsify your hypothesis?

>I'm not a proponent of the AAH, but howabout a foot fossel that is very
>apelike, but shows more development towards bipedalism, from a geograpical
>area that would not be AAH friendly? This would show bipedal development
>did not take place in an AAH enviroment.

The AAT proponents don't predict any significant differences in the skeletal
remains of A.ramidus that aren't also predicted by the savanna theory.So the
impasse remains.(sigh!) But I think that if the kind of foot fossil that you
mentioned were to be found in South Africa and dated to ca. 4.5-5 myrs the
AAT would get into trouble.
I think that something like "Little Foot",the 3,5 myrs old fossil foot bones
from Sterkfontein,recently (re)discovered by R.clarke and P.Tobias would make
a good candidate.This fossil looks very apelike and would have been suitable
for climbing as well as bipedal locomotion,but it seems a little too young to
represent the initial stage of the transition from tree to terra (though it
still is a good example of an intermediate morphology outside the aquatic ape
setting of Afar)

Gerrit.