--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <richardhughes...@...> wrote: > > Forget knowledge being structured in consciousness (whatever > that means) and collapsing Ark sounds and take a look at where > we actually came from: > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/oct/01/fossil-ardi-human-race > > Aint she pretty?
The NYTimes has a good story on this today. The "multimedia" component has a nice graphic of Ardi, full length, standing beside her skeleton. I'm a little skeptical of the size of her hands, though. They look way out of proportion to her skull in comparison to any other hominid type I've ever seen. She has opposable thumbs on her feet. I'm envious--that would be really, er, handy! But I guess opposability had to go in favor of feet better engineered for walking (and running) upright. It bothers me a little that the Times refers to Ardi as "it." Seems to me she's enough like us to deserve the dignity of a personal pronoun. Paleoanthropologist make beeg joke: "Andrew Hill, a paleoanthropologist at Yale University...noted that Dr. White had kept 'this skeleton in his closet for the last 15 years or so, but I think it has been worth the wait.'" Maybe that's a cliche line among anthropologists, but it cracked me up. Of interest, perhaps, to advocates of the Caveman Diet: "The more than 145 teeth collected at the site were of the size and shape and had wear patterns showing that the individuals were omnivorous eaters of plants and nuts, as well as small mammals, but were not as big consumers of fruits as are living chimps and gorillas." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/science/02fossil.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp http://tinyurl.com/y8umxw3
