Re: Hair loss (was Re: underwater space aliens)
Thomas Clarke (clarke@acme.ist.ucf.edu)
23 Oct 1995 12:42:02 GMT
> In article <46bbp1$pc7@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, Alex Duncan
> <aduncan@mail.utexas.edu> says:
>idea that australopiths were hairy is simple analogy. They're chimp-like
>animals, living in environments similar to the ones that chimps live in.
>Knowing that, and since we can postulate no adaptive reason why they
>should have lost their hair, it seems most reasonable to suggest that
>they had hairy bodies.
Substitute bipedalism for hair loss in the above argument, back
up the time frame to just after the chimp/australopithecus lineage
split, then you have my problem with how bipedalism developed.
To make it explicit since I'm using a whiz bang GUI reader today:
The proto-australopiths are chimp-like
animals, living in environments similar to the ones that chimps live in.
Knowing that, and since we can postulate no (differentially) adaptive reason
why they should have become bipdeal, it seems most reasonable to suggest
that they had are not bipedal.
If I recall correctly before Lucy it was thought that Australopithecus
was at best be partly bipedal. There was evidence of bipdealsim in
S. Afrcian crania but it was not widely accepted.
My understanding is that speciation in space rather than in time depends
on geographic/reproduction isolation. So what was it that isolated
the proto-Australopiths from the proto-Pans?
Seriously, was thre a mountain range or something - it doesn't have
to be the stretch of water that I favor.
Tom Clarke
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