Great Ape Ancestors

Were they closer to tailess monkeys like Proconsul or more gibbon-looking creatures, like this little chap.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedra_Furada_sites
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*chap?
I meant this as a question.

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Really?

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>graphic doesn't include humans among living apes

anywho,
as I'm sure you're aware we've a paucity of ape fossils so it's impossible to say at this time.

If you're concerned, go dig us up some more ape fossils and maybe we can settle the question.

monkey detected

I dunno about the graphic, maybe it's just to make it more digestible to the general public.
Also I don't know where to look. Any suggestions? The gibbon-like fossil in the first pic was found in a landfill in Barcelona apparently.

>Any suggestions?
Well what the paleontologists do is first determine WHEN the animal they're after existed. This should be pretty easy to discover. Then you figure out WHERE the animal should be based on hypotheses about its geographic distribution at the time.

then you get yourself a geological map that shows soil exposures from the target time and place and you go explore those. Probably with a screen and a shovel.

Then you'll likely find that ape fossils are extremely rare so you could likely spend a lifetime screenwashing dirt looking for them and still turn up nothing. So you go back to the map and throw darts at it and dig wherever the darts land. After decades of digging some guy building a house three miles away finds what you spent your lifetime looking for and gets to name it while your colleagues that spent the last 20 years in nice air-conditioned offices and laboratories get to describe it.

you attempt suicide in frustration but survive and end up winning the lottery with that lucky ticket your aunt bought you to cheer you up while you're in the 'hospital' recovering by drinking charcoal and telling 'doctors' how you feel about your mother.

...or so I've heard.

Feels bad, man.
I think I'll stick with trying to find North American apes.

I spent a couple months helping out on the Snowmastodon project, my only exploration into post-Mesozoic paleosols of North America. We found lots of cool stuff, but no apes.

Doesn't hurt to look, but you won't find any.

Who said anything about an ape in the traditional sense? I'm talking possible Erectus habitation in the Northern U.S., possibly around Oregon. Considering that they spread as far as Java, it's not entirely out of the question.

possible.
I think a discovery in Florida a couple months back pushed the date for human habitation way back.

I mean there's more and more sites being dated well before humans were supposed to have arrived.

Most of the really crazy early stuff is in South America though. Isn't there a cave in OR that had really early human remains?

Nothing for South America that I've heard, is it interesting?
Also, you're probably thinking of Homo Naledi, the newest addition to our family tree. It has no date as of yet.

>Nothing for South America that I've heard, is it interesting?
I don't know personally.
I've just read some Wikipedia on pre-clovis peoples. There's some sites in South America that are dated something like 3k ya.

no, there was an early person site in Oregon, I'd have to go look it up. Earlier than Kennewick Man by several thousand years. It seems like this guy also had some weird features, like he was probably European rather than Asian.

>3k ya.
sorry, that's 30,000 not 3. Way before people were supposed to be here anyways.

All I can find on Oregon cave people is shit. Literal fossilized shit. 14,300 human shit.
Also some pre-Clovis artifacts.

*14,300 year old

that may be what I was thinking of. that's a couple thousand years b4 anyone was supposed to be here.

I seem to recall bones in the Columbia River drainage, but I might be mixing up the shit with Kennewick Man.

As long as it ain't Nebraska Man, I'm good.

One of Osborn's few blunders. He did a lot of good work with dinosaurs though, I like to read his stuff.

this is the SA stuff I was thinking of:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedra_Furada_sites

Sounds real to me. I hope they get the whole thing settled soon.
I'm honestly more focused on the earlier African hominids, mainly to settle a few scores.

>mainly to settle a few scores.
like what?

I got into paleo to settle a score. Not that I ever did, but that's a whole different story.

Mainly a creationist science teacher. I brought up the "Grand Canyon disproves a global flood" argument, and he had the nerve to say "well maybe God made it that way." It's just the sneer-and-jeer with them when I bring up that subject.

my creationist uncle used the Grand Canyon as evidence of the global flood.

I don't mind real creationists though. If they're happy thinking god made everything exactly the way it is, I say let them. They aren't harming anything. That sorts itself out just fine. The kids with the aptitude to understand evolution are going to get it whether their parents or teachers want them to or not.

I just have an issue when the rest of them that either don't care or do as they're told. I wish I could get someone who's more experienced to go up against him, but I don't know who. I couldn't possibly do it, I was self-taught. I'm at a Christian school, so we're taught it as fact. I learned about how Tubal-Cain was the first metalworker, Lucy was just a chimp, and how dinosaurs walked the earth with man.

Also, does this look like a bird?

kek.
I suppose it's a grand coincidence Veeky Forums is trolled with creationism at the same time you and I are having our paleo talks?

also you have to be over 18 to post here, though I have no doubt you are....

anyways, like I said, it honestly doesn't matter.
there's nothing at all to gain in debating them.
evolution is our shibboleth.
creationists don't generally have access to science because they aren't tall enough to ride the ride.

yes

fusion of the canon bone and reduction of the caudal series are fairly avian.

length of the forearm and manus is off though. Also the teeth aren't bird teeth.

Probable Avaialan, not bird.

Most of them were initially me, but I decided to stop after a while. I'm just asking general paleontology questions as of now.
Alright then, I'll stop fighting a lost cause then.

You sure? Look at the teeth and the long tail. You don't see that in birds. Also, the thing is about the size of a boxer.

Ok it's just that AiG was posting something about them just being weird birds.

>Look at the teeth
bingo.

bird teeth are conical with a narrowing at the gum line. They lack carrinae and usually aren't serrated. They look more like crocodile teeth than non-avian dinosaur teeth. They usually aren't recurvate.

Sorry about that, I had posted just after you did, but it didn't update the page.

that's what got me into paleo.

As I mentioned I was raised JW creationist. They claimed that Archaeopteryx was just a weird bird. But they illustrated it with the nostrils up under the eyes to make it look more birdlike.

I began researching the thing and quickly stopped being a creationist and started down a path of looking too closely at birbs.

Oh, it's you, that one chap who studies theropods.

yes, you're not likely to find anyone else on here that knows the diagnostic characters of Avialae right off the top of their head.

I've spent years looking. You're the closest I've seen in ages.

Well sir, I'm quite flattered. Here, have an ornithomimid complete with feathers.

always a pleasure. Whatever your reasons you know more about paleo than the average person.

And this Yi Qi

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Let's just say the past always fascinated me.

likewise.

and I'm a treasure hunter. Treasure comes in all shapes and sizes.

Well, I gotta get some sleep. See ya i. 5-8 hours.

I'll be watching for you.

I salute you my fellow treasure hunter.
*in

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I'm back.