From: Chris Ho-Stuart <>
Newsgroups: nz.soc.religion,aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evolution (was women in church)
Date: 7 May 1999 01:27:28 GMT

Able <> wrote:
> On Wed, 5 May 1999 16:13:45 +1200, "Paul Wilkins"
> <> wrote:
>
> >Able wrote
> >>You simple are not keeping up to date on the latest
> >>African findings on the "missing link"..neither is Allistar..
> >>keep abreast boys.. keep abreast.
> >
> >Give us references Able, give us links.
>
> The missing link?
> There is not one.
> Have you got TV in NZ :-)
> it was big news last week.
> Perhaps it was just a  media blow up.
> Able

Well -- the recent finds in Africa are certainly significant, but
the TV description of their significance reflected journalistic
preceptions and rhetoric.

The term "missing link" was coined in the last century, before we
had good fossil evidence of intermidiaries between modern humans
and the hypothesized common ancestor with modern apes.

Since then there have been a wealth of finds filling this gap.
The term "missing link", however, is so evocative that journalists
cannot resist using it at every opportunity.

We now have a large collection of fossil finds representing a
great range of forms ancestral to modern humans or divergent
since the divergence from the apes and hence having intermediate
characteristics. Of coure, every find introduces new (but smaller)
gaps, and so there is plenty of room for more "missing links".
However, these links are links between between exinct species
which were (of course) at the time of their discovery ALSO missing
links in the chain.

The recent find was not the missing link between modern humans
and apes sought last century. It was one new link in a chain of
links which has been discovered throughout this century.

Specifically, it is proposed as a link between Homo erectus and
Australopithecus.

The jury is still out on exactly where this species belongs in
the evolutionary bush of our exinct ancestors and near relatives.

Cheers -- Chris