Re: An alternative to ST and AAT

Phillip Bigelow (bh162@scn.org)
Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:11:18 -0800

Thomas Clarke wrote:
>
> >> If the circumstances leading to the unique species of which I am
> >> a member were not unique, then why did it not happen before?
>

Phillip Bigelow <bh162@scn.org> responded:
> >How can you be so *sure* that it hasn't happened in other fossil primate
> >taxa before? How many more Miocene and Pliocene primate fossils
> >remain to be discovered?

> If it did happen, it was abortive.

"Abortive"? How do you know this? Or did you mean
"they went extinct"? If you meant the latter, then I
could agree in principal with you.
"Abortive" implies the perjurative that the body plan was
not desirable for the environment in which it exists.
Certainly, you are not claiming that bipedalism is
a non-desirable character trait?....or are you?

> I think we would find things like fossil pyramids if they had been
> built in the Miocene and Pliocene. Remember it is only a couple
> of million years from the Australopithecenes to the pyramids.

A delicate vertebrate fossil buried in soft sediment is a lot
different in terms of survivability than is a 1,000,000
metric-ton pyramid composed of two-ton blocks 2-3 meters on a side.
You make the most unusual analogies, sometimes! :-)
<pb>