Creationists: Ardi Poses No 'Threat'

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009 Posted: 4:17:17PM HKT

While a media outlets around the world are touting a nearly two-decade-old find as the oldest known skeleton of a potential human ancestor, creationists point out that even the team of researchers who unveiled the reconstructed fossil cannot refute the possibility that it might be simply that of an extinct ape.

“Based on our first look … the facts seem solidly behind the idea that Ardi was a quadrupedal ape with relatively little in common with humans (i.e., no more than most apes),” wrote staff members at the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, referring to the skeleton by its nickname.

“[T]he key basis for the alleged Ardi–human link (which even the authors are hesitant to confirm) is the idea that it walked upright-an idea that even evolutionists have criticized,” the ministry added. “And we can’t forget that all of these conclusions are inferred from digital reconstructions and fallible reconstructions of bones that were in very bad shape.

“As far as we’re concerned, the evolutionary ‘threat’ to creationists from Ardi is no more than that posed by Ida: viz., none,” they concluded, referring to the 47-million-year-old fossil touted earlier this year as the “missing link” between prosimian primates and anthropoid primates.

Last Thursday, a multinational team of 47 researchers, who have been studying the bones of “Ardi” since they were discovered in the early 1990s, presented them as those belonging to the oldest known “potential human ancestor,” Ardipithecus ramidus.

The skeleton, found in Ethiopia and thought to be 4.4-million years old, includes most of the skull and teeth, as well as the pelvis, hands, and feet – parts that the researchers say reveal an "intermediate" form of upright walking, considered a hallmark of hominids.

“This species … resolves many uncertainties about early human evolution, including the nature of the last common ancestor that we shared with the line leading to living chimpanzees and bonobos," commented team member Tim D. White, director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

According to the Institute for Creation Research, however, placing Ardi into human ancestry creates more problems than it solves.

"For example, Ardipithecus' body structure shows no objective or undisputable transition toward uniquely human features," the creationist group stated.

"Speculation and evolutionary guesswork, not scientific observations, are offered to bridge these gaps," it added.

And, as Answers in Genesis noted, Ardi is a partial skeleton put together based on the bone fragments of at least 35 sets of skeletons – many of which were in such bad shape that it took 15 years before the research team could fully analyze and publish its findings on the combined skeleton.

“[A]s a starting point, creationists should remember that - as with many fossils - the state of preservation is far less perfect than what media images and ‘reconstructions’ portray,” the ministry pointed out.

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Eric Young
Christian Post Reporter