Someone once said that you can’t convince someone of a thing they already don’t agree with (although not entirely true, a good principle to live by)
And just as long as i am allowed to think freely, i’ll try to keep my hair out of other people’s faces.
…although arguing /is/ fun

amphiox, the mystery of bat wings has been solved – by Dr. Karen Sears, an evo-devo scientist who is now at the University of Illinois. Google her name, and you can read up on her findings.

Only? So archeologists should never be sitting in an office thinking about what their discoveries might mean? They should never be working on a computer analyzing their finds? They should never be in a museum cataloging specimens? They should never be in a lecture hall teaching undergraduate students about their science? The only thing they should be doing is digging up stuff and putting them in big piles in dusty storerooms?

Careers are made and broken arguing over conjecture. The only place an archeologists nose belongs is in dirt. The only place for churchy noses is in books they haven’t banned yet.

Meanwhile, Creationists, use your remaining moments to read two books:
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright

“When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity.
When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”
— Robert M. Pirsig, “Lila: An Inquiry into Morals” (1991)

“Fundimental falsehoods of creationism” is a video series that is educational and entertaining. “Why do people laugh at creationists” is a bit more partisan and gets off topic from time to time, but I liked them regardless.

Since the split with our last common ancestors, chimpanzees have been evolving independently for 6 to 7 million years, just as long as humans have been. And through that entire time their lineage has been getting progressively more and more chimp-like. The hypothesis that our LCA with chimps was more chimp-like than human-like is primarily based on comparative studies of modern apes and humans. Humans seem to us to be the outlier, to be more different from the other modern apes than these apes appear to be from each other (it should be pointed out that there is a high likelihood of some human-centric bias in the selection of the criteria we consider to be most important in terms of measuring the magnitude of differences, too), so we hypothesize that our lineage has changed to most relative to the common ancestor. Since we have no fossils of the common ancestor and no fossils from the chimpanzee side of the split, this hypothesis does not rest of very solid evidential ground and it would not be surprising or earth-shattering to find out that it turns out to be erroneous on particulars.

It is also a hypothesis that the first major adaptive change distinguishing the human side of the lineage from the chimpanzee side of the lineage was upright walking. And this hypothesis is based primarily on fossils from the human side of the split, and certain considerations of parsimony which may or may not ultimately hold true. It most certainly remains possible that upright gait developed prior to the split and that knuckle-walking developed independently and convergently in the chimps and the gorillas. It is even possible that upright walking predates the split with the gorillas and was the primitive condition. If we should one day find evidence that indicates this, it would be interesting and perhaps a little surprising, but it would not be earth-shattering and it would not change one bit the overall picture of human evolution – just the details.

Ardipithecus had a bipedal gait and more human-like canines. It also had an ape-sized brain, ape-like forearm to leg length differential, ape-like jaw, ape-like molars, ape-like face, ape-like opposable big toes. It was an adept tree climber, but less adept than modern chimpanzees and earlier miocene apes. It could walk upright, but less efficiently than Australopithecus (which walked less efficiently than Homo), and it could not run very well at all.

It is an excellent example of a transitional form between earlier miocene apes (many of which did not knuckle-walk) and later Australopithecus, which are excellent examples of a transitional form between earlier Ardipithecus and later Homo habilis, which was an excellent transitional form between earlier Australopithecus and later Homo erectus (possibly the first member of our lineage who could run efficiently in addition to walking upright), which was an excellent transitional form between earlier Homo habilis and later archaic Homo sapiens, which was an excellent transitional form between earlier Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens sapiens.

I could also point out the fossils of Orrorin and Sahelanthropus from 6-7 million years ago slotting neatly between the miocene apes and Ardipithecus, although these fossils are fragmentary (a thigh and hip joint from Orrorin and a single skull from Sahelanthropus).

This discovery doesn’t change the big picture of our understanding of human evolution. It confirms it. Only the details have been clarified.

Chimps don’t evolve into humans. At some point some animal that was more human like and another animal that was more chimp like had the same parents. Those parents probably shared the characteristics of both. Chimps are no more evolving into humans as you are evolving into your father.

@Gregor: It’s been shown that eyeballs in different species can have different paths of selection (i.e. arising out of completely different unrelated structures from different organisms). This is strong evidence that having eyeballs (and sight) is an evolutionary advantage that can be selected for. Your statement of “If it’s not complete, it’s useless” is obviously a paraphrasing of Behe’s theory of irreducible complexity. Although that theory has not been tested or experimented (as scientists are supposed to do), it makes certain predictions that turn out false. Please read up on the Bacterial Flagellum (one of irreducible complexity’s main examples) and precursor structures in other bacteria which are composed of fewer parts but have a perfectly valid use (and therefore “not complete” yet definitely not “useless”).

I highly recommend watching the Nova documentary Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html). It might answer a lot of questions you may have. At the very least it will give you a good basis on which to argue from instead of trying to do it from how you “think” evolution works.

The Theory of Evolution is not based on nothing. It’s based on a number of facts that are seen in the natural world and certain hypothesis made about why they are that way. Those hypothesis are tested to see if they hold true. One of my favourite examples of evolutionary predictions that turned out to be true is the Human Chromosome 2 (http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm). Now as a scientist, I’m not saying 100% that that’s what happened. I’m saying that based on the (observable) evidence that we currently have, evolution provides the best answer.