Afarensis: Reconstructing Lucy's Pelvis: Another Creationist Canard Exposed

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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 Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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Reconstructing Lucy's Pelvis: Another Creationist Canard Exposed

Category: Creationism • Paleoanthropology
Posted on: July 13, 2008 10:55 AM, by afarensis, FCD

In a previous post I talked about how creationists misuse White and Suwa's paper on the foot of Australopithecus afarensis to cast doubt on the species bipedal ability. Another area creationists like to focus on is the pelvis. David Menton, for example, has spent quite a lot of time trying to cast doubt on the reconstruction of the AL-288-1 pelvis. Specifically, he claims that Lovejoy reconstructed the pelvis to fit his own biased preconceptions. G. P. Jellison examines this claim in an excellent piece called Creationist Claims About the Reconstruction of the "Lucy" Pelvis. As Jellison points out, contrary to creationist claims, the fossil itself was not cut up or damaged in any way, rather Lovejoy used casts. This raises another point, while you may be able to obtain casts of Lovejoy's reconstruction, you can also find casts of the Al-288-1 in all its damaged glory. When I was at the University of Tennessee the cast we had was of the latter, rather than the former, and the damage was quite obvious. Anyway, check out Jellison's article - especially because Jellison corresponded with both Lovejoy and Johanson for the piece (why didn't I think of that?)

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Comments

Have I said before that I really enjoy your blog? Worth saying again anyway.

This particular post answers a specific creationist attack (on another forum) that I had no backing information to respond to before, so I'm now armed and ready for the next time. Thanks.

Posted by: Bee | July 15, 2008 11:57 PM

Ahh, creationists, great for entertainment, so sad that they have something of a political lobby trying to get their crazy ideas taught as "science."

Posted by: Jared | July 21, 2008 12:16 AM