Re: fossil foot bones
H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
12 Oct 1995 03:03:02 -0400
Alex Duncan <aduncan@mail.utexas.edu> writes:
>ALL of the fossil foot bones from 3.5 Myr are consistent w/ the view that
>early hominids retained pedal grasping abilities. What is unscientific
>about assuming hominids w/ grasping feet used those feet for grasping?
There are two reasons (using your kind of logic of evolution);
1) The grasping would have had to stop way before the grasping foot
disappeared otherwise the grasping foot would have never disappeared
since they'd always be using it to grasp.
2) The walking foot (i.e. non grasping foot) would have had to
appear at some time, but the fact that the walking_foot did not
appear until millions of years after they started walking
doesn't seem to bother you when you make the kinds of statements
that you make all the time.
Chimps still don't have "walking_feet" but walk. YOu always look
at everything from a heavily biased version and never consider
it from another perspective. This gives the wrong idea of
distance. If we didn't see chimps but only their bones should
we have assumed that they never left the trees? Well, since
we were told that they spend 90% of their time on the ground
even with their "grasping feet", how much of their time
did they spend on the ground when they only had "significant
climbing ability"? HOw much more would it have been if
they only had "very large climbing capability"? How about
if we changed these phrases to :
not insignificant
very significant
quite significant
reasonably significant
blah blah....
--
Regards, Mark
http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey
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