Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Yesterday I mentioned the bogus claim by DaveScott. Well he's back repeating the same claim and dismissing evidence for no reason. A commenter pointed out that there are hundreds of fossils for Neanderthals, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens . Does DaveScot admit he was wrong? Nope:
Sure. All tiny fragments that together won't fill a coffin. Lucy was one of the most complete fossilized hominids available and they were certain she walked erect and was a human ancestor. For decades this was a given with utter assurance. Now it's been brought into serious question. They aren't even sure if Neandertal is in our line of descent or not and he's almost contemporary.
Several things are wrong with this. First, Rak's article only analyzed a few traits and was not very convincing (there is a lot of within species variability in the traits Rak looked at). Second, even if Australopithecus afarensis is removed from the line of human ancestry, they were still bipedal and still shared a lot of traits with later Homo. Amusingly, DaveScot seems to think Neanderthals were almost contemporary, even though we are separated from them by approximately 25,000 years. But then, as John Stewart points out, linear time is sooo pre-9/11so I guess he is correct.
The fossil record is the only real evidence we have since DNA is destroyed in just thousands of years. There are a few short proteins found in bone like osteocalcin that can survive for millions of years and have been recently sequenced but a 50 monomer protein doesn't tell much of a story.
He also seems to have missed the whole Neanderthal Genome Sequencing thing.
Then he says something that is almost as amusing as his coffin claim:
Back in Darwin's time it was reasonable to think that the fossil record was largely unexplored and that it would eventually tell a story of continuous small changes leading from one species to another but that's not the case today. There is no story of continuous small change in the fossil record and it isn't because we haven't looked hard enough - it's because you can't find what isn't there.
Apparently he didn't understand Rak's article. I say that because Rak argues, as have others, that Australopithecus afarensis is ancestral to the robust australopithecines. Tim White argues, convincingly, that we have a chronospecies running from Ardipithecus through Australopithicus anamensis to Australopithecus afarensis. So, whether we maintain that Australopithecus afarensis was a human ancestor or not, this is still a great example of gradual evolution
You can find pics of Neanderthals here, European fossils here, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, the robust australopithicines here, here and here, and Homo habilis. This is just a small sample of the hominid fossils available, but already the coffin is overflowing. Judge for yourself.
Here is one picture of skulls from the Kenya National Museum (imagine if they had trotted all of their fossils out for the picture):
Mo
Comments
This claim is similar to one I hear from creationists (like Jonathan Wells) all the claim, where Henry Gee said in his 1999 book, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life (pg. 199) -
Emphasis added, the part the creationist wants you to see.
The thing is though that they ignore the part between the bolded bits, that Gee is only refering to hominid fossils older than 5 million years.
Posted by: Dave S. | May 6, 2007 11:25 AM
Yeah, I hear it occasionally also. I usually give an abbreviated answer like the one in the earlier post, then I start talking about the primate fossil record from the Oligocene to present. Usually, about halfway through you can see the exact point when the person decides that they are real sorry they brought it up...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | May 6, 2007 3:27 PM
"Sure. All tiny fragments that together won't fill a coffin."
Well, maybe ...
Wasn't there a woman over 700lbs.? So, if you take all those fossils (no fillers, please) grind them into powder*, condense them into bricks, maybe -- just maybe -- you could get them into her coffin?
No?
An elephant's, then?
*Just a hypothetical; cancel that order for a hit man.
Posted by: Susannah | May 6, 2007 4:21 PM
The most comprehensive list/database of hominina fossils I can find is here, on Wikipedia. It is a shame there isn't a centralized database on hominin fossils to show the wealth of fossils we have under our belts.
Posted by: Kambiz Kamrani | May 12, 2007 7:45 PM
This and this are quite good also...I think you can even find some in the Paleobiology Database, Faunmap, and the Miocene Mammal Mapping Project (links on sidebar).
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | May 12, 2007 9:27 PM