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Re: Why Large Gap Between Species...?
Nat Turner (turner@smarty.smart.net)
6 Dec 1996 23:08:09 GMT
In article <5846rh$mkk@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us>,
Rajindra Maraj <b068755c@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us> wrote:
>Nat Turner (turner@smarty.smart.net) wrote:
>
>: This has never been clear to me. Now that we've established man's
>: origins, how do we explain the absence of all his closely related
>: sub-species? Even the austrolopiths should have been better equipped
>: to survive than monkeys and apes, yet they have not. Why?
>
>: Nat
>: --
>
>--
>The Austalopithecines left the forrested regions for the savannahs. In
>doing so they left the forests to the other apes, who remained and
>continue to evolve to their present form. As savannah dwellers, the
>Australopithecines were forced to compete with other, more advanced
>hominids. Though they were not as intelligent as the later Homo lines,
>the robust forms specialized in a rough vegetarian diet. Hence there was
>reduced competion with the hunting/scavenging Homos, and they survived
>well into the reign of H. Erectus. They may have been better suited than
>the apes for savannah dwelling, but they had long since lost the traits
>necessary for forest dwelling. Natural selection wiped them out.
>
>raj
>b068755c@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us
Sorry, a bit too pat for my tastes. You offer merely textbook concepts
instead of real pictures. What I mean is this: You conclude natural
selection wiped out the piths and, granted, this is the best explanation
currently in circulation, but what does this really mean? How specifically
did this "natural selection occur? Do you mean hominids simply outsmarted
piths? That in any given instance of the two competing for the same prey
hominids always (or at lease most of the time) won out?
Please tell us precisely what you mean when you use this term to describe
what happened to the piths. Give examples if you can imagine one.
Nat Turner
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