Question:
How convenient that the common ancestor of human beings and apes is extinct?
Wayne
2011-04-14 06:13:29 UTC
There is virtually no evidence that human beings evolved from apes, yet atheists still regurgitate this myth like it is a fact. They point to human beings and apes sharing a common ancestor. We ask to see this common ancestor and they say, 'sorry buddy, it's extinct'.

Why would it be extinct? There is no logical reason unless, as is quite clearly the case, evolution is a load of hogwash cobbled together by half-brained buffoons masquerading as scientists.
Seventeen answers:
Lighting the Way to Reality
2011-04-14 19:07:01 UTC
Wayne, you keep asking your nonsensical questions, and they keep getting refuted by myself and others.



The only reason I continue to answer your questions is that some Y!A users might click on them and, not being very knowledgeable about evolution themselves, think you might have a legitimate argument.



By looking at the fossil record, it is quite apparent that 99.9999% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct, and that most of the species that presently exist have existed for only a very small fraction of the time that encompasses the existence of life on the earth.



Species stop existing either because they die out without leaving descendants as a result of changes in the environment that they cannot cope with, or they evolve into new species that do cope with changes in the environment. In some cases, part of a population of a species finds itself in a new environment and changes to fit that environment, while another part of the population of the species remains in the original environment and changes little over time, though sometimes the environment there may change somewhat, which results in some additional changes from the common ancestor.



That is why humans evolved separately and more distinctly in comparison with their ape cousins who did not change as much from the common ancestor.



The evidence for apes and humans having a common ancestor is in the fossil record:



http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/hominids.html



And in the genetic record.



About fifty years ago, when it was first noted that apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, but humans have 23, the creationists subsequently pounced upon that as evidence against the evolution of humans from a common ancestor with the apes. The evolutionary scientists, however, using evolutionary theory and an understanding of genetic modification, proposed that two of the chromosomes must have joined together in the line that led to man from the common ancestor, thus reducing the chromosome number.



That prediction has been verified with the results of the recent human and chimp genome projects. It was found that human chromosome 2 is the result of the joining of two chromosomes that have homologues in the chimp. The decoding of the genomes revealed that human chromosome 2 has a stretch of non-functioning telomere coding in the exact place it should be if the two chromosomes had joined in the human line from the common ancestor with the apes, and there is also non-functioning coding for a centromere in the exact location where the extra centromere would be as it occurs in one of the homologous chimp chromosomes, as well as a functioning centromere in the same location as in the other homologous chimp chromosome.



Long before the genome projects verified it, this article contained an example of the proposition that two of the ancestral chromosomes joined together to form human chromosome 2. (The link is to an abstract of the article. The full article is available for a fee. Sorry)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/215/4539/1525



The following site (which is an NIH human genome site), however, does have this statement: "Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes - one less pair than chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other great apes. For more than two decades, researchers have thought human chromosome 2 was produced as the result of the fusion of two mid-sized ape chromosomes and a Seattle group located the fusion site in 2002."



http://www.genome.gov/13514624



These sites explain the finding of the genome projects.

http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chromosome_2

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html



No creationist pseudo-scientist could make a before-the-fact prediction like that. All they can do is to make up pseudo-explanations after the fact of the finding.





Just for clarification. Since all of the great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, and the chimpanzee is our closest ape relative as indicated by comparison of the DNA of each species, the combining of the two chromosomes must have occurred in the line leading to humans after the separation from the line leading to chimps.



And when the two chromosomes were originally combined in one of the pair set, they could still have matched up with the separate chromosomes of the other set of the pair--like lining up two short straws alongside a long straw--so there would not necessarily have been a reproduction problem.



There may have been an evolutionary adaptation advantage in having on a single chromosome two particular genes that were originally on the two separate chromosomes. For example, the two genes may have complemented each other, and their ending up on a single combined chromosome kept that complement intact, whereas when they were on separate chromosomes they could easily have been lost to each other in the genetic shuffling process that normally occurs during reproduction.
2011-04-14 06:26:15 UTC
Oh come on!!!



Where do you get these notions that there's virtually no evidence?! Who told you that? There bundles of evidence!!! The fossil record, DNA... How is that virtually no evidence? If you choose to ignore that evidence, that's different to their being no evidence!



It is extinct in the way that most things have become extinct. The environment changed so the animals changed to suit the new environment. Why would the old, unsuited thing survive? It's common sense! You obviously have no idea what evolution actually says do you? Why don't you at least learn about something before you start criticising it? Otherwise you just come across as an idiot.
2011-04-14 06:24:32 UTC
Actually the common ancestor was basically apes. Just that one group of apes changed more than another. And the logical reason they're extinct is because their descendants aren't the same as them. No 100,000 year old apes living in the jungle someplace.



There's something missing in your logic skills if you can't understand the idea that over thousands of generations any animal isn't exactly the same as its distant ancestors. Work harder at understanding just what really big numbers mean.
2011-04-14 16:21:28 UTC
no more convenient than it is that the common ancestor between me and my 2nd cousins is dead (namely, my great grandparents)





"There is virtually no evidence that human beings evolved from apes,"

lying for jesus is still lying...



"yet atheists still regurgitate this myth like it is a fact. They point to human beings and apes sharing a common ancestor."

human beings ARE apes... so it's a little ridiculous to think we don't share a common ancestor...



"We ask to see this common ancestor and they say, 'sorry buddy, it's extinct'."

those would be paleontologists... not atheists...



"Why would it be extinct? There is no logical reason unless, as is quite clearly the case, evolution is a load of hogwash cobbled together by half-brained buffoons masquerading as scientists."

or it was out competed by a lager, faster, smarter version of itself, like say... Ardipithecus kadabba, Ar. ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Au. afarensis, Au. africanus, Au. bahrelghazali, Au. garhi, Au. sediba, Kenyanthropus platyops, Paranthropus aethiopicus, P. boisei, P. robustus, Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, Homo georgicus, Homo antecessor, Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens idaltu, Archaic Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis... just to name a few

that is, of course, ignoring things like climate change (the world dried up a lot and then entered several periods of ice ages) which would also lead to diminishing habitat, forage, and hunting grounds (starving to death is a pretty good way to go extinct)



"half-brained buffoons masquerading as scientists."

The same half brained buffoons that built the computer your using, the vaccine that kept you alive past six months of age, create the food you eat, purify the water you drink, created the drugs that stop you from dying of the cold and built the structure you call home... those idiots?

yeah those ******* don't a damn thing
2011-04-14 06:26:20 UTC
Why would it be extinct?



Firstly, because most species that have ever lived are extinct. Just as most of the people who have ever lived are dead. We're living in a tiny sliver of time, and the stuff that exists now is a tiny fraction of the stuff that has existed in the past.



Secondly, because of the very nature of evolution; survival of the fittest. Humans and apes out-competed their common ancestor. Humans out-competed it on the plains; apes out-competed it in the jungle. So the common ancestor died out.
Greg Davis
2011-04-14 13:30:32 UTC
Potassium-argon dating has proven that the human species has drastically evolved from an ape-like creature over a bare minimum of 3,000,000 years. More specifically, I am referring to the fossilized skeleton of the "Dikika child" (DIH-kee-kah), named for the region of the discovery site in 2006. These remains offered an unprecedented view of childhood growth in a species that evolved to a midway point between apes and humans, according to the team led by Zeresenay Alemseged of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
iCanHelpSome
2011-04-14 06:20:42 UTC
Tons of species go extinct all the time. We can look at fossil records and things of the like to see what they were and when they lived.



Also, if the common ancestor went extinct it's because of the little thing called "survival of the fittest."
2011-04-14 09:46:14 UTC
Isn't it cool the way we did that. And then we coerced the people doing the human genome project to fake their results to show that we share 98%+ genes with those pesky apes. And all of those transitional fossils. We got satan to bury them for us. We should really go with the fantasy crowd.
2011-04-14 06:21:04 UTC
-There is virtually no evidence that human beings evolved from apes-

Well,I guess you don't consider all these fossils and stuff evidence.

And of course it's going to be extinct.Earth back then was a lot different from now.It wouldn't survive that easily in conditions today.
2011-04-14 06:17:51 UTC
About the same as dinosaurs being extinct and proven to have lived well before the young earth age.
Strega
2011-04-14 06:19:59 UTC
99% of all species have gone extinct. I don't think you are making the point you had hoped to but instead again look as if your education was lacking.
Arrow Maker
2011-04-14 06:17:36 UTC
Woe! There SEA BISCUIT!



I think we found you, you weren't extinct! Just playing dead. HAHAHA!



The ancestors were not apes, they started as primordial ooze, then they became lizards, then apes, then -- well --- you!



Then us!
secretsauce
2011-04-14 07:39:14 UTC
Most ancestors are extinct.



That's why they're called 'ancestors', sparky.





What percentage of your human ancestors are still alive?
?
2011-04-14 06:19:31 UTC
Do you have any idea how many species are extinct compared to how many are not? It's a thousand to one.
Atheist1239
2011-04-14 11:20:02 UTC
Please note that almost every species that has ever existed is now extinct.

Scientists can determine common ancestry by examining DNA strands and finding long matching sections.
2011-04-14 06:15:31 UTC
Notice that educated, intelligent, reasonable, rational people do not take you seriously, but instead laugh at your ignorance and lack of intellect.
2011-04-14 23:58:59 UTC
if you came from an ape them where did the ape come from and what ape did we come from and if we came from an ape where is everything in between? are the a deformation? think simple, god created the fish of the sea according to their kind and the land animals according to their kind the birds according to their kind, we have never seen any thing yet turning from one kind of animal to another , and if it does change then they all change and thats the law they have to fallow


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