Genesis Impact Clip - Ardipithecus Ramidus "Ardi"

I had a couple questions on the leading fossils you showed that supposedly show how humans evolved over time.

Could you go back to the side you have on Artie? Sure. I'm sure you're referring to this issue.

Well, actually, no. This skeleton was reconstructed from over 110 bone pieces that they found over a 30 foot area.

It took them over a decade to put it together. The picture on the cover is only a digital reconstruction of what they found.

What kind of shape are the bones in? They weren't found in very good shape at all. In fact, the scientists who found it, it took them three years to dig it up, about a decade to put it together.

They said that the bones were found in terrible condition and literally crumbled when touched.

The lead scientists called it like roadkill. Were any of the bone pieces found connected together?

No. All the 110 plus bone pieces were found separately over the 30 foot area. That doesn't sound odd to you.

Let's take her head, for example. What type of evidence did they find for reconstructing her head, which is displayed in school textbooks and museums everywhere?

Well, this skull was found in pulverized condition in 34 scattered pieces and was compacted to about one and a half inches thick.

So they tried making digital reconstructions. What about her skull made her seem anything but ape -like?

I mean, did she have a bigger brain than most chimps have? Something else? Actually, no.

Her brain was about the same size as bonobos or female chimpanzees. But one of the ways we can tell she walked upright is based on her skull, specifically where the spine enters the base of the skull, called the foramen magnum.

Can you show me what you're talking about? Sure. This is actually a version that took them thousands of hours to develop digitally based on what remained of the skull.

After the 11th digital version, they settled on this one. 11 versions? How can you tell where her spine enters her skull from the pieces they found?

I mean, and do they have any of her other neck vertebrae so we can see how it might have gone into her skull?

No. So, let me get this straight. They don't actually have the entire base of her skull to see where her spine entered, but they made a digital reconstruction so they could guess where it might have been.

But they don't have her neck vertebrae either, and they think she walked upright. Based in part on these two things, but they don't really have either one.

Well, the human -like curve of her lower spine is another reason they thought she walked upright.

Okay. How much of her lower spine did they find? Did they find any of her lower spine vertebrae?

Well, none actually. They estimated the curve of her spine, called lumbar lordosis, based on her pelvis.

Dr. Lovejoy believed that her spine was probably long and curved like a human's rather than short and stiff like a chimp's, suggesting that she was an upright walker.

You see, we have four curves in our spine to facilitate upright walking. While chimps just have a slight bend over their entire spine.

He based this assumption on the reconstruction of Artie's pelvis, in the belief that Artie probably had six lower spine vertebrae.

But they didn't actually find any of her lower spine vertebrae. No, but they were able to reconstruct what they think the pelvis looked like, and that helped them guess what the lower spine may have looked like.

How many lower spine vertebrae do chimps have? Most apes typically have three or four. Humans have five.

Okay, so they don't have any of her lower spine vertebrae. So they added some imaginary ones, gave her a couple extra beyond what typical apes have, gave her an entire imaginary spine, complete with a human -like curve, and fed it up to a hole in the imagined base of her skull with some neck vertebrae, which they also didn't find?

And don't any other evolutionary scientists have concerns about this? Well, actually, they do.

There are some who believe that the theory that Artie walked upright is faulty because it's based on highly speculative inferences about the presence of lumbar lordosis and on relatively few features on the pelvis and the foot.

So paleo -experts aren't buying it? Yes, several are not.

So if they're basing her upright walking on her pelvis, what was her pelvis like? Well, it was too damaged and fragile to take it out of the matrix it was in, so Dr.

Lovejoy made a restoration based on his knowledge of primate anatomy and a micro -CT scan. And after 14 different configurations, this is the one that they settled on.

It's the one you see in most reports. They reconstructed her pelvis digitally 14 times?

Yes. And I'm sure you want to know what other paleontologist experts think about that. Well, there is speculation among some experts who believe that choosing the correct pelvis reconstruction is like seeing images in a

Rorschach ink blot test, thus making it hard to think that it's accurate.

Look, I know there are concerns about Artie. She's not the perfect proof of the ape -to -human lineup.

Look at her hands and feet. They look ape -like. They're really curved and long with short thumbs, very similar to tree -dwelling apes of today that use them for getting around in trees.

Why would a creature with such big divergent toes, which are used by every ape today for getting around in trees, be an upright walker like humans?

Wouldn't that be awkward? Trying to walk on level ground with a big toe sticking out to the side?

Could you go back to the side of Artie's skeleton? See, I just don't buy that she's an early human ancestor.

She had a brain the size of a chimp's, in a head like a chimp's, with an imagined base of the skull and an imagined curved spine.

But because of a bump on her pelvis, she was supposedly walking around like a human?

It looks like there's a lot of speculation going on here. In some cases, even exaggeration.

It doesn't look like she would be a good walker to me. But I bet she'd get around in trees like other apes.

You had a slide showing Artie next to a bonobo, correct? When you put her next to a bonobo, it sure looks like she fits into the ape family just fine.