This was on E news tonight and I just couldn’t resist to google it 
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-08-02.html
BBC News - South African fossils could be new hominid species
What astounds me is that this discovery was not plastered all over every newspaper’s front page in the world. The only reason I can come up with is that this new species of hominid blows the Creationist’s argument out of the water - it’s the missing link we’ve been looking for.
I, for one, am over the moon about this discovery and consider it a major step forward in uncovering the mystery of our origins.
Porchrat, a user over at Mybroadband, posted about this. The first link was to a hilariously muddled article on iol.co.za which made a great fanfare about a “direct descendant of man” - they have thankfully fixed up their article. ;D
There is an article on Wikipedia now, with other references:
A really good one ( it’s got pics! ):
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2010/04/close_to_homo_-_the_announceme.php
Also:
The “cranial capacity” of 420–450 cc might imply a close ancestor of Julius Malema.
It was amazing! When Prof Berger started the news conference, I checked and there was nothing in Wikipedia on Australopithecus Sediba. Before the conference was done, the article was up. Pretty impressive. Well done Wikipedia!
I must vehemently disagree with you regarding your cranial capacity statement. Comparing Julius’s brain to those of early ape-like hominids is a massive insult to the hominids. Julius may in fact be proof of de-volution.
;D Haha! Very true!
I heard on the news this morning that apparently Berger is not calling H.Sediba the ‘missing link’. Now, I don’t know much about this kind of stuff, but to my knowledge the concept of ‘the missing link’ is kinda misleading? Aren’t there quite a few ‘missing links’ in the whole ‘how did we come to be here’ question?
It’s more like yet another nail in the pincushion-like coffin of their argument, which was already very much dead a century ago.
Uhm, not necessarily. It remains to be established whether the specimen lies on the direct line of descent to modern humans or whether it is a side branch, i.e. a species that eventually went extinct. Its proper taxonomic status is presently unclear and will probably be a source of scientific controversy for a while yet.
There is no doubt that the discovery will add significantly to our understanding of hominid evolution.
'Luthon64
Ah dang it, now they have done it again, they have just made two more missing links that need to be discovered :P.
in a perfect world, where i had money to study, and the brains to boot, i would have become an archeologist, or geologist, so any kind of finds rocks my socks right off.
as a missing link theory goes. it was pretty much just a matter of time. either by finding actual fossils to test and analyze, or by some other fantastic dna doo-dabbie or other.
i, for one, has never doubted evolution. its kinda weird tho, that xtian schools teach god made the world, and that we evolved from amoeba, in paralel. i cant remember what my child-mind made of that back in the day, but to me now, i think that kinda confusing.
if you had to write a test about evolution, and you said that god made it all, and that’s it, you will get a big fat zero.
anyhoe. funnily enough, my sister, who i, thankfully, have no contact with, came to me, all aflutter some years ago, brandishing a dvd she got from who knows. about some dominee, claiming that there are no such thing as evolution, and that fossils found showing a ‘crouched’ posture, was, in fact, just old people, bent with age (which is kinda funny, cause i schemed that back then, you didnt ordinarily live past like 35. nevermind a crumpled and arthritic and bent over 85).
wished i took down that particulat piece of shite’s name, would be a good giggle on a friday nite with the friends.
what is worse, my sister believed it, and was so lank excited about this find.
blech.
like i said, i no longer have contact with her.
Quite right - I have now read all the articles and my response came from the initial announcements following the discovery a few weeks ago. Of course, our evolution was not necessarily linear in nature (branch-evolution and all that) and Creationists have never had a good argument.
I still think this kind of research is mind-blowingly interesting and, like GothCatGirl, would LOVE to have done this as a career.
Shhhhhht! Don’t tell Kent Hovind! Then again, do they have a television in his jail?
I have complete sympathy with your statement
I must say that is one of the funnier BS explanations I’ve heard. But then again, it was from a dominee. I remember being chased out of a Sunday school class once for asking where dinosaurs fitted into the whole creation thingy. I also remember a guest speaker who used to show up at school every few years. I think his name was Rodney Seale or something. He used to see the devil in everything, especially music. He even managed to find the devil in a Roxette song. Iron Maiden posters really got him excited.
Sorry to hear you no longer chat to your sis. I must say, my dinner invitations have also dried up somewhat since I decided to stop believing in the socially required fairy tales.
Well done to Prof Berger, Prof Dirks and all the rest at Wits for removing a large chip from the massive rock that is human ignorance
i dont have any contact with any of my family anymore. for the anties, im just a source of new gossip. having tattoos tend to do that. and having a lesbian relationship.
i stopped speaking to my mum and sis after they wanted me to go back to my abusive husband, but now, its like load has been lifted. no more xmas table praying, no more hiding my tattoos, or my black hair. no more having to sit and listen to racist and homophobic talk. no more hearing that i alienate the good afrikaans boys cause i try to hard to be weird. in fact, everything i do is just ‘attention seeking’. no more god loves you emails. no more having to hide that i donate my eggs, cause my sister is struggling to get pregnant, or cause my stepdad will think, i dont know what. or talking about my, heaven forbid, non-theist beliefs. or having to worry about them finding out i, the horror, smoke weed on occasion (nevermind having schnarfed the happy powder).
all in all, i lost a mother and a sister, but i gained a huge world of freedom from criticism.
so i can have a relationship with a woman if i choose, and not have the evil eye, and not be able to hold her hand in front of them. or hear that my nephew is turning gay cause of me. or have them snigger if i bring a guy home that’s got long hair.
in my opinion, a sad, but needed chop.
The “missing link” idea is in any case something of a creationist ruse. Creationists seem to want unbroken successions of fossil lines that show speciation (or macroevolution). Anybody with a basic grasp of biology and geology will quickly see that creationists’ expectations in this regard are entirely naïve and uninformed. Fossils necessarily represent discrete snapshots in time of species development (analogous to time-lapse photography), and these snapshots are in many cases widely spaced so that we must interpolate between them. It is the legitimacy of such interpolation that creationists seek to undermine by claiming “gaps” or “missing links” – in effect saying that because we don’t have a fossil intermediate between specimens A and B, we cannot claim that they are on a common line of descent, and hence the two are separate and unrelated. If an intermediate fossil, C say, was to be found, creationists then often argue that there are now two “missing links” – one between A and C, and another between C and B. In case it’s not clear, that is the point of Teleological’s quip.
'Luthon64
What a touching reply! Seriously! I might quote you on a few things. You’ve clearly been through a lot, all because of the ignorance of others. What amazes me is that all the things that you are being judged about are completely harmless to your family and the world. Having tats, being gay (the crime of loving someone), having black hair, smoking the odd holy herb, not being racist, donating eggs, leaving an abusing coward etc etc. Not one of these things contain any malice. Not one of them causes any harm. In fact, some of them are damn inspiring.
And if we look at the other side : Gossip, judgement, homophobia, religious zelousness, indoctrination, racism, abuse, holier-than-thou-ism (new word), projection (blaming you for the nephew’s preferences), and overall being shitty family members. Filled with malice, ignorance and bitterness and loving to pee on your happiness.
So, if I compare the two sides of the argument, you start looking like a bit of a hero. Damn right that you cut the buggers out of your life. They were damaging you. Trying to shove you back into a closset and chipping away at your individuality and free thought. Good darn riddance!!
But, the snarfing of the white stuff!! Now for that you are definately going to hell!! Hehe.
no more hearing that i alienate the good afrikaans boys cause i try to hard to be weird.
Hmm, I would think that would get you the “truly” good afrikaans boys.
Good point Boogiemonster ;D
Fossils show earlier evolution
Scientists unveiled fossils from west Africa Thursday that push back the dawn of multicellular life on Earth by at least 1.5 billion years.
"The cursor on the origin of complex multi-cellular life is no longer 600 million years ago, as has long been maintained, but more like 2.1 billion years," said Abderrazak El Albani, a researcher at the University of Poitiers and lead author of the study.
plenty of room for everyone to evolve nicely. take that creationists!
quite proud of my little rant:
scenario: you are born, and live in a blank room untill you are 10. you believe that the entire universe is your room, and whatever is in it. and you will argue with anyone who tells you otherwise. the door to your room gets opened, and you experience a corridor. upon seeing this, your little world is rocked, but with the evidence staring you in the face, you adjust your ideas, so that now, the room and corridor is the entire universe. the corridor leads to room, etc etc etc. anybody that claims to know everything, and claim to be the absolute authority on science, is an ass. the mark of a good scientist, is to allways explore and learn. if you decide that your current hypothesis is the correct and absolute one, then you need to stop calling yourself a scientist. science will, and will allways continue, to change, adjust and question it's current beliefs. simply because the nature is science, is such, that, by exploring, the bar is constantly moving. and science will adjust it's theorems and ideas, to move along with evidence presented to them. in this day and age, no scientist can come up with some thumbsuck hypothesis or evidence, without a storm of peers picking apart every molecule of it. to deny science and evolution, is to deny thousand of competent, intelligent and learned people, who knows a helluvalot more than anybody that has commented here. to base your beliefs upon writing by humans, that lived thousands of years ago, based upon bronze age knowledge of the world and universe, is the most bizarre and stupid idea ever. (if you are a bit slow, i'm referring to the bible). do you honestly think, that some guy, that lives in a hut made from camel skin, that was born in the outback of some desert thousands of years ago. that has only ever knows, the desert, his goats, the stars, and based his knowledge upon stories handed down (and changed a thousand times over, based upon assumptions) to him by his elders. when, eventually, literacy reached someone who was wanting to write down the 'creation story', what amount of bollocks do you think he came up with? and to say that god spoke to him..... wow. it is well known that these people partook of drugs aplenty, drank alchohol made out of who knows what, with toxitiy levels up high. there was no shrinks to diagnose and help people 'hearing voices'. there was no scientists to explain perfectly normal, although strange, phenomena.... i mean, to still cling fervently to the bible for your resource for anything from morality to science, is beyond my understanding.
You have more patience than me, I can’t read through all the stupidity in those comments without closing the page.
i generally hit and miss. i read the short ones, and catch the drift.
heartening, though, to see the amount of logically thinking individuals out there.