Just ran across this essay at anthropology.net and thought those interested in paradigm shifting theories regarding our evolution, might want to take a gander.

http://anthropology.net/2007/12/15/a-human...r-for-the-apes/

Wow... the implications for BF research is obvious.

Great find!

Hey thanks for the link.

This has been gaining momentum for a while now (there's even a book covering the subject), pretty exciting stuff.

Yeah, it would make the bipedalism reported in sasquatch a bit more concievable.

Great find! It does seem to look at evolution from a more 'biomechanical' perspective. I don't know enough about apes and humans to know whether his presumptions are correct or really off the wall. I'd be curious to hear what some more knowledgeable individuals have to say about this article. Are his assumptions of bipedal walking in short bursts or prolonged movements correct, or presumptive? The anatomical data sounds correct, and he brings up an interesting possibility of the common ancestor to humans and chimps being primarily bipedal.

This keeps popping up but there are some problems with it, and then there are some things that may be resolved.

The basis for the molecular timeline given is based on the hypothesis that species evolve every certain set of years (last I thought I had heard it was every 500,000 years) at a continual rate. This isn't necessarily the case. So the separation of the chimp and human lines doesn't necessarily have to have been 5-6 million years ago.

Also the dating of tchadensis was based on faunal dating, meaning they had found other animal fossils in the same strata that had been Potassium-argon dated or argon-argon dated at other sites, and so used those dates to get a good estimation to date tchadensis by. Tchadensis is then dated at 6-7 million years old, but various factors could have happened in the last millions of years to displace tchadensis or the various fossils used, and the mapping of that area is not complete.

However, the theories of bipedalism and how it came to be are interesting, and the similarities between Hylobates and even the posture of orangutans gives an interesting theory that there was a type of bipedalism in the trees, not necessarily like walking on two legs on the ground like humans but using the upper limbs to pull while the lower limbs are used to support.

very informative new article about hominids. thanks bill

Some of the comments that this theory provoked reminded me of the reasoning that was used so effectively in Planet of the Apes...the book, not the movie. Don't know how many here ever read the original by Pierre Boule but it is a masterwork of SF and social comment....and to my way of thinking a whole lot more frightening, in part because of the power of the mind to rationalize while pretending to be objective..a very human characteristic.