1. A hoaxA hoax: n. 1. Practical joke 2. Deceptive trick 3. Play trick upon 4.
Decieveexample: Piltdown ManFor forty years they were considered one of the archaeological finds of the century: A fragment of jaw and a part of a skull that could prove man evolved from the apes. They were the bones of Eoanthropus dawsoni found near Piltdown Common in Sussex. The bones of the "Missing Link." Not since 1953 the name "Piltdown" hasn't been associated with great scientific discovery, but great scientific fraud. It was in that year that a group of scientists, lead by Kenneth Page Oakley, attempted to use the new method of fluorine testing to get a more exact date on the bones. What the test showed surprised them: The jaw was modern and the skull only six hundred years old. Additional analysis soon confirmed the fluorine tests.
The jaw was really that of an orangutan. It had been filed down and parts that might have suggested it's simian origin were broken off. Both pieces had been treated to suggest great age. Piltdown was proclaimed genuine by several of the most brilliant British scientists of the day: Arthur Smith Woodward, Arthur Keith and Grafton Elliot Smith. How did these faked fragments of bone fool the best scientific minds of the time? Perhaps the desire to be part of a great discovery blinded those charged with authenticating it.
Many English scientists felt left out by discoveries on the continent.Neanderthal had been found in Germany in 1856, and Cro-Magnon in France in 1868. Perhaps national pride had kept the researchers from noticing the scratch marks made by the filing of the jaw and teeth. Items that were apparent later on to investigators after Oakley exposed the hoax. Even as early as 1914, though, there were those that doubted the fossils. William King Gregory wrote, "It has been suspected by some that geologically [the specimens] are not old at all; that they may even represent a deliberate hoax..." Who perpetrated the hoax? Many historians lay their bets on Charles Dawson, the amateur geologist that supposedly discovered the bones in a gravel pit.
Others, though, lay the blame at the feet of people as diverse as a young Jesuit priest, named Teilhard de Chardin, who assisted in the dig, to the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived in the area. Dawson was an English solicitor who sought and collected fossils.
Over the last few hundred years, more and more has been added to the world’s fossil collection, fossils from all over the world. New theories have been created and old theories have almost been proven about the evolution of man. For example, we have proof that different species of man existed with certain types of DNA sequences and instincts, some we may not have anymore, or some that other species did not have back then. Even though it is subjected to much debate, one of the most widely accepted theories however, is that Homo sapiens interbred with the slightly more primitive species of man, the Neanderthal.
A study performed by Martin Hausler and Peter Schmid of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, appeared in the October 1995 issue of Journal of Human Evolution, igniting controversy over the 1974 Australopithecus discoveries in Hadar, Ethiopia. The most famous of the Hadar specimens is the 3-million-year-old skeleton, “Lucy,” who was recovered by paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson. In his article, Shreeve presents the methods and findings of Hausler and Schmid’s study as well as some counter arguments from other scientists in the field.
There was a chief new discovery of fossil bones and teeth belonging to the earliest human ancestors ever discovered. The fossil bones predate the oldest formerly discovered human ancestor by more than a million years. The discovery was of fossil remains of a hominid that lived in present day Ethiopia between 5.2 and 9.8 million years ago. (Hominids include all species following the split as of the chimpanzees on the “human” side of the evolutionary tree.)
In a search to find our ancestors, several anthropologists have found evidence to support their conclusions. In the films about Don Johanson's discovery of Lucy in Hadar, one may be very intrigued by the first film but very disturbed by the second film.
Four hypotheses of how the bodies got there occupation, water transport, predation, and death trap were ruled out. A new hypothesis was formulated what if Homo naledi intentionally buried their dead? Although there is not enough evidence yet to confirm this, such behavior would be significant in that it would precede previous cases of the behavior in Neanderthals and humans. This would add to the argument that Homo naledi are of the genus Homo. After the examination of these fossils and extensive research, it was concluded that Homo naledi were a new species of the Homo genus.
On November 24, 1974, an American Anthropologist by the name of Donald Johanson and his research team, made a ground-breaking discovery that caused a mass dispute in human evolution. Dr. Johanson documented in his book, Lucy The Beginning Of Mankind, the discoveries he and his team have come across. Dr. Johanson and his team discovered a skeleton of a hominid, dated between 3.9 to 3 million years old (164). The hominid, which they referred to as Lucy, was discovered while surveying Hadar, in the Dafar region of Ethiopia (164-166). Lucy’s discovery, a 41% complete human ancestor caused a controversial alteration in the human origins. Lucy was the oldest human ancestor. During the following year, Johanson’s team discovered fossilized remains
... over the print is correct. All of these facts are bittersweet though, since sample specimens have nothing to be compared to since no actual creature specimen has been collected. It can be concluded, however, that these remains did not come from any animal currently known to modern science.
Australopithecus afarensis who existed 3.5 million years ago and a 4.4 million year old skeleton of an Ardipithecus ramidus are the closest science has come to discovering the human lineage. Shattered Ancestry an article written by Katherine Harmon discusses the remains of two hominids found within Ethiopia. These skeletal remains have created a huge controversy within the topic of evolution questioning many assumptions that have been made referencing the human lineage. The skeleton of the Australopithecus afarensis was named Lucy and was discovered in 1974. The evidence of her walking upright on her two feet essentially guaranteed her a spot in the human lineage line. Lucy was a chimplike ape that was said to walk upright making scientists believe the human ancestry was simple. The complete skeleton found in Ethiopia of an Ardipithecus ramidus named Ardi completely changed all assumptions made from scientists about the complexity of the human lineage. These remains have encouraged researches that the human line is not the only lineage to have evolved but the chimpanzee line has undergone drastic changes as well. There are many traits that researchers have always directly linked to the human lineage however since these discoveries occurred researchers are reconsidering. The recent discoveries that have shattered what has always suggested what linked a species to the human lineage have changed the certainty of whether it is possible to confidently identify the human’s last common ancestor. Majority of scientist had forgotten that there would have been many hominid species living together at one time. New theories have been suggested since scientists revealed that the foot of a hominid found called the Burtele site was found ju...
... are minds are playing tricks on us and that we assume were seeing the creature. But, the funny thing is that years before her article came out Radford wrote one on Bigfoot too. It also states in the article that throughout the world there hasn’t been any blood, bones, or bodies ever found.
Hundreds of sightings in Northern America and Canada date back to the nineteen hundreds, though most sightings have happened in the Pacific Northwest. The first swamp ape witness was by David Thompson who was attempting to cross the Rocky Mountains on his trip he wrote in his Journal-- "I saw the track of a large Animal - has 4 large Toes abt 3 or 4 Inch long & a small nail at the end of each. The Bal of his foot sank abt 3 In deeper than his Toes - the hinder part of his foot did not mark well. The whole is about 14 In long by 8 In wide & very much resembles a large Bear's Track.
From the ancient bones of the Neanderthals, scientists have been able to extract small amounts of DNA. The DNA comparisons to modern humans show no relationship, implying evolutionary separation (Kunzig, 159). Some anthropologists say the small sections of DNA found are not conclusive evidence, because modern humans show just as much variation in DNA. These people point out that individuals such as the “Portugal Kid” are hybrids of Neanderthals and modern humans, showing there was gene trading. One argument against this is that there is no skull from the ‘Portugal Kid” so it is hard to compare it to Neanderthals. Also, it is known that closely related species can breed and their offspring can be fertile, but they are still separate species (Kunzig, 161).
Scientists thought that interbreeding would be a logical assumption to the Neanderthal conundrum. Unfortunately, any evidence of DNA from Neanderthals mixed with human DNA is difficult to come by because their fossils are usually tarnished upon finding. That is until Svante Paabo, and his research team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, came across the remains of twenty-four Neanderthals and forty early humans.* All of these fossils were nearly 40,000 years old and were from Germany, Russia, and Croatia. Nine of these fossils (four Neanderthal and five human)
An incident with his wife’s horse led Walcott to make his first discovery of a common Burgess Shale fossil known as Marella. At the time he did not realise the ...
This Austrolopithecus afarensis was suggested to be the intermediary species between anthropoids and man. In the beginning, people were suspicious about the Taung child because Dart was responsible for the Piltdown hoax and was quite young to be evaluating the skull. Hence, people thought he would be too inexperienced to deal with such an important fossil. Also, the location of the Taung child was inconsistent with the theories of the time. The Taung child's skull was very unique because it was complete and there were dents to the skull. Many clues and evidence led to the conclusion that the Taung child was killed by a bird of prey. As a result, this changed the notion that humans were predators, the truth is, they might have been the prey.
Austalopithicus meaning “southern ape” was the first specimen to be found. The Austalopithicus was found in African and was know to have lived from 4.2 to around 1.0 million years ago (Standford 251). They had a small body like an ape that would get approximately 64 to around 100 pounds. They had a big jaw with a U-shaped mouth of small teeth. The brain size of a Australopithicus was small and would get approximately 340 to 500 cc, which is in the same range as gorillas and chimpanzees brain sizes. The top of their skull was of a bony ridge. They were able to walk on their two feet and had a small pelvis. The Australopithecus were found with stone tools, which made them the first stone tool makers.