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Re: Who Killed the Australopithecines?
BARD (bard@netcom.com)
Sat, 1 Apr 1995 07:32:56 GMT
In article <3lf34k$a9d@jupiter.wichitaks.hmpd.com>,
Jim Foley <jimf@vangelis.FtCollins.NCR.com> wrote:
>In article <bardD673D5.M88@netcom.com>, BARD <bard@netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> Everything being equal, they were better equipped to survive
>> than either ape or man; yet they perished... How and by whom?
>>
>> Bard
>
>On what grounds do you say this? I have never read anything that would
>suggest it, and it doesn't even make much sense to say such a thing.
>Chimps are probably better at living on fruit in jungles,
>australopithecines were probably better at living on nuts and berries in
>a savannah environement. Neither are "better" in some absolute sense of
>the word.
>
>I'm also curious about your earlier messages about proving that piths
>are extinct. What more proof would you want than the fact that they're
>not found? (A fossilized autobiography of the last living
>australopithecine?) We can be 99.999999% sure they're gone, and that's
>good enough for me.
>--
>Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins
>Jim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765
>
Evolution suggests a progression in adaptability. Working backwards
we see the Pith's hands and feet were more evolved than the chimpanzee;
the chimp's more so than the baboon; the baboon more than the
tarsier, etc...
Piths could do more things, travel greater distances, eat a wider
variety of food, employ more clever ways to get this food; evade
danger better, and yet the chimpanzee survives and the Pith
doesn't.
Why?
And... not finding something is not "99.99999" proof it
doesn't exit. In this decade alone several species thought
long extinct have been discovered still with us.
BARD
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