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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (21061)	3/30/2008 12:08:02 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

I favor the savanna fragment hypothesis. That was the one where bipedalism allowed for quicker movement from one forest fragment to another (with the added bonus of seeing over the grass while you travel). In this hypothesis the chimps that most easily walk upright still get to keep a complex mixed gene pool by returning to the larger forest, but gain an advantage of unoccupied niche in the smaller fragments that knuckle-walking chimps can't easily reach. This avoids the genetic problems that can arise with a small founder population. Ultimately the upright walker variety would walk far enough away that they no longer mated with chimps and diverged to a new species. I suspect that statistical analysis of gene information will be better able to show which characteristics evolved first and in wha order. TP

To: neolib who wrote (21061)	3/31/2008 6:23:34 AM
From: DavesM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

re: "The oldest claims for bipedalism have recently pushed back to 7 mya." You referring to the ostrich or the giant pangolin? :o) Actually, bipedalism is quite old. When you think carnivorous dinosaurs, you think biped. Most birds are bipeds too. Now as far as I know, there is no theory linking human loss of fur and fire - yet. But Rogers studying the MC1R gene believes that man lost his fur at least 1.2 million years ago. This would mean that early man walked around naked for about half a million years (estimates are that man didn't wear clothes till about 50kya) before discovering fire - if fire was first used 700-800kya. What evolutionary advantage would there be for Homo Erectus or Homo Ergaster to loose his fur and walk around naked - how does he keep warm at night? How does he migrate (without the means of keeping warm) from Africa to Europe, Northern China and Indonesia? How about fire provides a greater evolutionary advantage than furry flammable arms? So early humans kept fire and ditched the fur. This would also mean that homo erectus (or his ancestors) discovered fire before leaving Africa and before becoming "naked".