Re: AAT Theory
Tom Clarke (clarke@longwood.cs.ucf.edu)
6 Oct 1995 10:01:50 -0400
r3dlb1@dax.cc.uakron.edu (David L Burkhead ) writes:
>In article <1995Oct2.135640.26457@arl.mil> Troy Kelley <tkelley@hel4.brl.mil> writes:
>>The seashore and vulnerability issues almost lead me to the notions
>>shared bysome AATers that perhaps some of hominid evolution occured on an
>>African costal island. This isolation could have provided the protection
>>we needed while we
>>made the difficult physical changes to bipedialism.
> Might as well say perhaps some of hominid evolution occured in
>the gene labs of 47 Ophiuchi III. It fits the data as well as AAh and
>makes about the same number of testable predictions (i.e. none to
>speak of).
Oh, David, why are you so hostile? He just made a prediction if you
had been listening. "Fossils in the time period corresponding to
the current 'gap' will be found in regions that were isolated islands
at the time of the 'gap'". Sounds imminently testible and falsifiable
to me. Just find a fossil in the gap not on an island.
I was thinking about the croc issue. Maybe Troy and you have it
backwards. Here is this proto-hominid living in a shore environment,
getting food from the sea, occassionally attacked by crocs. The croc
attacks may have favored efficient bipedalism as a way to flee the
water rapidly to get away from the crocs. (I can't imagine
a concerted attack by crocs from the sea and leopards from the land :-)
If there were a tendency to take the pinniped (et al) route to
water adaptation, it would be selected against by the need to get
rapidly out of the water on occassion.
Tom Clarke
--
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment
and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against
the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices - Adam Smith, WofN
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