Lucy and her kin are Still Extinct Apes

This post contains links to several articles that should prove useful to students, teachers, parents, and other people interested in the human origins debate. It deals with the australopithecines, emphasizing devastating material regarding Lucy. Well, devastating for Darwinists, not for biblical creationists.

Background image furnished by Why?Outreach

The hands at the Darwin Ranch ( head out Folly Road past Stinking Lake, then head northwest to Deception Pass, avoid the Winkie Guards) are excited about a newly Australopithecus anamensis discovered skull. Like Lucy (some scientists want it called Lucifer because they contend it was male), parts were found scattered in different areas. There is no actual skeleton. Scientists disagree about whether or not it was just another extinct ape, albeit a different variety. Arguing from naturalistic presuppositions, some think it evolved into Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy), others invoke the magic of parallel evolution. The evidence actually shows no evolution, just extinct apes. Just like creationists have been saying for years.

Publishing in the journal Nature, a team of experts described a fossil skull that puts both a new face and a contradictory age onto an extinct ape variety previously known only from teeth and bone fragments. The team discovered the fossil in 2016 in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Early on, they recognized it as an australopithecine ape, but after analysis, they assigned it to the species anamensis.

Australopithecus anamensis supposedly evolved into Australopithecus afarensis — the most famous example of which is nicknamed Lucy — which some have asserted became humans. But many evolutionists see no anatomical link between this extinct ape kind and mankind. One zoologist admitted, “They are just apes.”

You can read this short article in its entirety at "Fossil Ape Skull Is a Game Ender". Be sure to come back for the next entries. 

This next article also deals with A. anamensis. It is also rather short, but has background and technical details for those so inclined:

The media has been drooling over a newly reported australopithecine fossil cranium alleged to be an ‘ape-man’ (i.e., hominin) in our family tree. However, the evidence is strongly against the australopithecines being a human ancestor. This latest find, of a cranium labelled MRD-VP-1/1, and attributed to Australopithecus anamensis, provides no new evidence that the australopithecines were anything more than an extinct apish primate group.

To read the rest, click on "New cranium, same old evolutionary ambiguities". 

Not all scientists in the field are on board with the human evolution from australopithecines,  and have provided material to support their contention that these critters were simply extinct apes. Now research shows that their eating habits were like those of some modern apes as well.

Secular scientists routinely confirm Australopithecus species as being nothing more than apes, and this new study is no different. In a recent paper published in Nature, Renaud Joannes-Boyau of the Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research Group at Southern Cross University, New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues reported that A. africanus exhibited seasonal eating patterns, similar to modern apes.

This article is also rather short, and not technical. To read the rest, click on "Australopithecus Ate Like an Ape". Now we come to the important material about Lucy.

Darwin's disciples have long had febrile enthusiasm for A. afarensis as a missing link between apes and humans. (There is no single missing link. The entire chain is missing, old son.) The putative discoverer of Lucy, Donald Johanson, conveniently made "discoveries" when his time was running out. 

He played fast and loose with the data, dealing from the bottom of the deck by presenting a skeleton that was assembled mostly from imagination and the scientific principle of Making Things Up™. DJ is also vehemently anti-Christian. Supporters of Lucy even did a bit of force-fit reconstruction of plaster casts to get what they thought the pelvis should be. Once again, presuppositions dominate the worldview and the narrative, and actual research is severely lacking.

 

The folks at Genesis Apologetics have some material for your education. (Mayhaps students can be detoxed from the propaganda and learn to question evolution.) Several videos are included, one of which is below. There is also a one-hour webinar. But wait, there's more! There is also a free downloadable PDF booklet, Lucy: The Australopithecus that fell out of the Human Evolution Tree. Free is good. The booklet is not strictly about Lucy, but includes creation science material and evangelism. To commence to downloading and watching, click on Lucy's Fall from Science.