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Humanity, Graecopithecines and the Parallel-Men; Or: Fundamental Re-Writing of the Human Sotry
Topic Started: Sep 15 2017, 07:41 PM (478 Views)
flashman63
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The Herr From Terre
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Two things:

First off, as some of you may recall a couple months back, they found a fossil jawbone and teeth in Greece that were highly suggestive of Homonid and ancestral Hominid dentition, suggesting a possible European origin for Homonids as a whole, dating back 7 million years. Of course, teeth aren't much to go off of and could well be the provenance of convergent evolution, making it an interesting but not quite revolutionary discovery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graecopithecus

Secondly, just recently, something extraordinary has been found on Crete: evidence of bipedal locomotion dating back some 5.7 million years. But not just that-- the feet of the creatures involved are distinctly human. More human than Ardipithecus or Australopithecus, both of which are thought to be our direct ancestors.

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The ball of the foot, the heel, the big toe, the compact size of the foot overall, the short, evenly spaced and evenly sized toes-- all of these features are unique to the genus Homo, never found in apes. And yet, these prints are younger than not only the genus Homo itself, but the youngest known Homonid (Sahelanthropus).

Now, we may speculate that this just represents a northern radiation of the Homonids in general, a dead end that died out.

The problem with this is that the footsteps in Crete are more recognizably human than the species that came after it that are believed to be our direct ancestors-- that is, the Australopithecines, who had much more primitive feet despite being closer to modern humanity than these Cretan tracks in age. When we combine this with the Graecopithecus teeth, which are also more modern than the teeth of Australopithecines, we are left with something far more interesting.

So, we are left with two possibilities: one, in one of the most extraordinary examples of convergent evolution ever recorded, an entire race of Parallel-Men evolved in the wilds of Southern Europe that developed not only human teeth 4 million years before the birth of the genus Homo, but human feet, which are an utterly singular structure within the natural world, found in no ape other than the genus Homo. I would speculate if these are "Parallel-Men", they probably have an evolutionary history not unlike that of my Piltdown Men in A Million Years BC-- that is, cousins or descendants of the partially bipedal Oreopithecus, who likely died out in the Messinian Salinity Crisis.

Or option number two, that the genus Homo is much, much older than we once thought, the Australopithecines are distant cousins, and our Ethiopian ancestors are, in fact, relics of a migration back into Africa. In which case, the common ancestor of humans and the great apes developed human traits at an absurdly quick pace.

Curiouser and curiouser.

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-fossil-footprints-theories-human-evolution.html
Edited by flashman63, Sep 15 2017, 07:42 PM.
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Archeoraptor
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what if australopithecus is the convergent one and is more realated to chimps than us
when did chimps-bobnobes and humans diverge
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and who knows what is coming next...........

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flashman63
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Archeoraptor
Sep 15 2017, 08:07 PM
what if australopithecus is the convergent one and is more realated to chimps than us
when did chimps-bobnobes and humans diverge
7 MYA
Travel back through time and space, to the edge of man's beggining... discover a time when man, woman and lizard roamed free, and untamed!

It is an epoch of mammoths, a time of raptors!

A tale of love in the age of tyrannosaurs!

An epic from the silver screen, brought right to your door!

Travel back to
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Proceedings of the Miskatonic University Department of Zoology

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Ebervalius
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In either case, Hominins are still of African origin, right? Man, human evolution is a mess... Hope we find more Greek fossils.
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Human evolution is now much less complicated now
Discontinued projects:
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flashman63
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Ebervalius
Sep 16 2017, 03:11 PM
In either case, Hominins are still of African origin, right? Man, human evolution is a mess... Hope we find more Greek fossils.
Yes, but the possibility exists that of Homo diverged this early and Australopitheciens are more closely related to chimps that humanity actually exists outside of Hominini
Travel back through time and space, to the edge of man's beggining... discover a time when man, woman and lizard roamed free, and untamed!

It is an epoch of mammoths, a time of raptors!

A tale of love in the age of tyrannosaurs!

An epic from the silver screen, brought right to your door!

Travel back to
A Million Years BC

-----------------------------------------------------

Proceedings of the Miskatonic University Department of Zoology

Cosmic Horror is but a dissertation away

-----------------------------------------------------

Some dickhead's deviantART
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Tartarus
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Firstly, the hominid clade includes all the great apes, so being a hominid does not necessarily mean something has anything to do with human evolution beyond being just another of our close relatives.
Secondly, the convergent evolution of human-like feet is not really all that unlikely. It is a very useful form for bipedal locomotion, far more so than the hand-like feet of quadrupedal apes. So it makes sense that if bipedalism evolved on more than one occasion among apes, as seems to be the case, then human-like feet would likewise have evolved on more than one occasion.

That said, I will not rule out the possibility of the genus Homo being older than is currently thought but so far it doesn't look like there is much to suggest these footprint makers were any more than just another bipedal non-human ape.
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Ebervalius
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I guess we could just say some time traveller was in Crete.
Edited by Ebervalius, Sep 16 2017, 06:21 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Some people talked about this on the discord, but how exactly do feet alone make it more compelling than transitional features across the entire skeleton?
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lerzid
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Lower jaw (= holotype) and tooth (left premolar P4) of Graecopithecus freybergi
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