-Caveat Lector- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000343180237640&rtmo=k7oYoqJp&atmo=9999999 9&pg=/et/01/7/26/ecfape26.html Earth: the real planet of the apes YOU can't keep a good film franchise down. Thirty years after the original movie, four sequels and a television spin-off, Planet of the Apes is back. This time, the latex masks, hairy chins and strange leather tunics have been brought back to the big screen by Tim Burton, director of Batman. Like the 1968 film, the story is based on Pierre Boulle's "reverse evolution" novel La Planete des Singes, a satire where chimps, gorillas and The remake comes after a busy period in the investigation of the real links between apes and humans. Over the past year, palaeontologists have identified three new species or sub-species of hominid - the group that With the human family tree looking increasingly bushy, it seems that for much of the past few million years several different species of hominids may have been living side by side. Never mind science fiction - for much of our evolutionary history Earth really was the planet of the apes. In the 150 years since Charles Darwin popularised the idea of evolution, fossil hunters have identified between a dozen and 20 species of hominid, which Recently, two candidates for the earliest known hominid have emerged, both tantalisingly close to the last common ancestor with the chimps. Last year, a Kenyan-French team led by Brigitte Senut and Martin Pickford unveiled "Millennium Man", a six-million-year-old chimpanzee-like creature whose existence was pieced together from 13 fossils. Remains from at least five males and females, including an arm, a fingertip, a jaw fragment and, According to its discoverers, from the Kenyan Palaeontology Expedition, its teeth were more like those of modern humans than any apes. Its strong femur suggested that it walked upright, but its powerful upper arm bone hinted that it might also have been at home in the trees.Senut and Pickford, who made the finding in Kapsomin in the Tugen hills of Kenya's Baringo district, argued that its similarities with Homo sapiens made it a contender for the title of direct ancestor.But as Millennium Man was being unveiled at a press conference, a rival team from America was working on This time, the fragments of bones were found in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia and were dated at between 5.8 million and 5.2 million years old. The finds, reported in Nature this month, included a piece of collarbone, several hand and foot bones and a jawbone with teeth, also with features more in common with hominids than any ape. The most important discovery was a toe bone which showed that its owner walked on two feet. The remains came from at least five creatures, a new subspecies called Ardipithecus ramidus kaddaba. Dr Yohannes Haile-Selassie, of the University of California at Berkeley, made the findings. He believes they could belong to the earliest "A year ago, we knew nothing about hominids older than 4.4 million years ago. Now we have two late Miocene fossil collections from Ethiopia and Kenya that can tell us something about the early evolution of hominids," he says."The latter is slightly older than the new discoveries from Ethiopia. Based on the evidence we have now, the two groups are different. More detailed studies of both in the future will clarify the relationship between the two sets. However, for now, they are different and represent So which of the teams is right? The Kenya-French team claims that Orrorin is on the human branch of the tree and that Ardipithecus is a chimpanzee ancestor. The American team disagrees. They believe their find has been thoroughly analysed and their findings have been carefully scrutinised by peer review. Perhaps more importantly, they could also have an ace up their sleeves.Prof Tim White, a palaeontologist and colleague of Dr Haile-Selassie at Berkeley, is currently working on a partially crushed skeleton of Ardipithecus, found in the mid-Nineties. The remains are slightly younger, around 4.4 million years old, but include a pelvis, a bone that could yield crucial information about how the creature walked.Dr White has yet to publish the full details. But because he works closely with Dr Haile-Selassie, it is likely that his unpublished work will have Like many colleagues, Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, is holding back judgment."My view is that we don't know enough about either of them yet to place them accurately in this cloudy area where hominids were diverging from chimpanzees," he says. "They are incomplete and in the case of Ardipithecus we know there is a much more complete material waiting to come in. It's a shame that people are competing to claim the earliest hominid at this stage. To have the last common ancestor would be fantastic, or to have creatures that preceded that would be equally valuable."The latest finds highlight the confusion surrounding the human family tree. The journey from the last common ancestor of chimps and humans resembles a voyage through a maze, full of paths that look promising but turn out to be dead-ends, or paths that separate only to perhaps merge again later. The dozen or so known hominids So what's the story so far? A common ancestor of chimps, gorillas and humans probably lived eight or nine million years ago. Gorillas went their own separate way, followed by chimps - mankind's closest living relatives. The split with chimps used to be thought to have taken place about five million By five million years ago, Ardipithecus appears to have been living in the cool forests that covered the Rift Valley of Africa. It apparently walked on two legs but still used strong arms to climb. Some time after 4.4 million years ago, the descendants of Ardipithecus may have increasingly lived on the plains. Meanwhile, the other branch of the family tree continued to develop into chimps, possibly reverting to a four-limbed walk, resting their upper arms on their knuckles.One astonishing part of the story of apes is the lack of chimpanzee or gorilla ancestors after their split from human ancestors. Possibly that's because the environment where ape ancestors lived did not lend itself to fossil formation. But there is also a suspicion that some of the earlier hominids are really ancestors of our ape cousins. By four million years ago, a new family of hominids had emerged, Australopithecus, the most famous of which was Lucy - a creature four feet tall who was found in Ethiopia and is thought by some to be a potential Eve for the human race.This was an era rich in hominids. Lucy may have lived alongside the recently discovered "flat-faced man of Kenya", or Kenyanthropus platyops. Within a few hundred thousand years, three more Australopithecus species had emerged: africanus, garhi and aethiopicus, along with a hominid dead-end - the ill-fated Paranthropus robustus and boisei.Some form of Australopithecus probably evolved into the first humans. Two candidates are Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis, although some argue that they are not true humans. A stronger case has been argued for Homo erectus, a successful species that wandered across the Earth and who may be the father of modern men and Neanderthals.Every anthropologist has a different account of the family tree - which is why the lines joining the species are usually flagged up with question marks. "It is difficult to say how these all relate to each other and later hominids," says Prof Stringer. "We don't know how many species there were. Early hominid evolution was very complex. Nature was conducting experiments in how to be human. All but one 'failed' and that one gave rise to later humans."It is like a bush with many different twigs. We have learned hard that just as you think you have decided something in human evolution, some new fossil comes along that ================================================================ Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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