Toumaï is not our Evolutionary Ancestor, Either

Articles about a critter that is considered a "fossil hominin", Sahelanthropus tchadensis, have been dropped over the transom here. It was presumptuously nicknamed Toumaï ("hope of life" in the Daza language) and some Darwinists think it is the oldest human ancestor.

Sahelanthropus was originally found in Chad in 2001, but I wonder if this supposedly earthshaking discovery is not touted so much is because there was controversy from the beginning. The bones are fragmented, and there is even speculation that people from long ago had fiddled around with it.

Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Wikimedia Commons / Bjoertvedt (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Perhaps researchers may have wanted to avoid another Lucy-type controversy, but that's just my speculation. After all, bones may not even belong to the same kind of creature. A recent study reveals that paleoanthropologists presupposed evolution and were thrilled by finding what they expected to see, but others did not gallop for the fences; some even thought it was just a female gorilla or otherwise inconsequential. They are also divided about whether it was arboreal or bipedal. Of course, they did not consider the truth that everything was created much more recently than they want to believe, and that this was just another apelike creature.

There are three articles to choose from, and I selected one to feature that I thought was the best of them to present here.

A recent CNN news article came out which discussed a Nature journal article on Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Sahelanthropus was discovered at the Toros-Ménalla site in Chad (Africa) in 2001, and research of the remains has been ongoing. The site has been conventionally dated by cosmogenic nuclide (10Be/9Be) dating methods to be between 6.8 and 7.3 MY. So far, the dig site has revealed a nearly complete cranium, three mandibles, and several isolated teeth as well as a left femur and two ulnae. Although all of these fossils were discovered in 2001, only the cranium, mandibles, and teeth were initially described as belonging to up to five individuals of Sahelanthropus. It took several more years to identify and describe the femur and ulna fossils (beginning in 2017 and concluding in 2020). This 16–19 year lag time in describing these post-cranial fossils has itself been controversial, with many researchers calling such a delay “inexcusable.”

Here are the options. To finish reading this particular article, click on "Is Sahelanthropus Our Seven-Million-Year-Old Bipedal Ancestor?" For a very detailed article from Evolution News, see "Fossil Friday: Sahelanthropus, to Be or Not to Be Bipedal." The shortest article may be more for your liking, which is located at "Upright Walking Ancestor?" You may want to compare the information in this one-minute video from 2013 with the newer information: