Lucy in Newsweek

[Curtis Clark]

At 08:55 2004-03-31, John Grehan wrote:
>But
>then I suppose some would try to say that Gary does not understand cladistics.

No, he doesn't understand DNA.

>Thus, the chimpanzee theory of genetic relationship is not very good as a
>predictor of either morphology or fossils.

I think someone on this list mentioned the possibility that the features
shared by humans and orangutans are plesiomorphies. If that were true, it
would suggest that the non-human African apes form a clade, which
contradicts the molecular evidence, but in a *far* less dramatic fashion
than the (human,orang) hypothesis (and it, too, solves the knuckle-walking
dilemma).

I admit that I haven't kept up with all the evidence, but it seems to me
that you are expressly avoiding the hypothesis
(orang(human(chimp,gorilla))), even though it, too, has had historical
support.


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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona                 +1 909 979 6371
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