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 
From the I can't believe they went there again files DaveScot and others have resurrected the flagella argument. So, below the fold is a video featuring various flagella in action. One thing to watch for, Bfast comments:
Wilkins, there's one problem with this argument. The flagellum actually works like a machine. Dispite the image being rendered in a nicely viewable form, flagella spin around, in a controlled fashion, causing forward motion. They actually do that, that part isn't a cartoon. Get it -- spin, forward motion, control, machine.
At about 51 seconds into the video we have a flagella "spinning" and watch which way the organism is traveling...
DaveScot also says:
Or maybe he never stopped to consider that all the illustrations of various extinct hominid "species" in museums and biology books, illustrations of them in the wild millions of years ago, depicted like someone took a 35mm photograph of them when they were alive when in reality that's more artists' reconstruction based not even on complete skeletons but just a few bone fragments the size of a guitar pick.
I don't know about you, but I think this Homo erectus skeleton:
is bigger than a guitar pick. So is this Neanderthal
So is AL 288-1:
So is the skull of KNM-WT 17000
As a matter of fact there are thousands of fossils bigger than a guitar pick which leaves me believing, and not for the first time, that Uncommon Descent is filled with clueless nitwits...
Update 1: And another claim by DaveScott bites the dust. In a later comment Dave says:
I'm afraid Professor Fuller does not want to field questions in the comments here. His only desire was to publically respond to a critical article in a trade journal. In fact he wanted comments disabled so no one would expect him to respond but Bill convinced him that the comments would be at least worth reading and should be enabled. Personally I would have left the comments disabled. If Professor Fuller doesn't want to wallow in the mud with the pigs who inhabit scienceblogs.com sometimes as authors and in the majority as commenters that's certainly something I can understand under the rubric "Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get covered in pigsh*t but the pig enjoys it."
Yet, here we have Fuller visiting ScienceBlogs, not once, but twice. If Fuller didn't want to respond to comments, then why is he, well, responding to comments? At ScienceBlogs no less? (Hat Tip to Bob O'H)
Comments
Clueless nitwits aside, that is a very cool video. Thanks for putting it up here.
Posted by: Lou FCD | August 24, 2008 7:39 AM
Of course, the fossil evidence is a lot more than "guitar pick" sized.
And there is a lot more to the evidence than fossils, however compelling they are.
But, beside all that, why does the physical size of the evidence mean anything at all about its worth as evidence? How big is a fingerprint, which can convict someone of murder?
From the Sherlock Homes story, "The Five Orange Pips":
"The ideal reasoner," he remarked, "would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.
Posted by: TomS | August 24, 2008 8:01 AM
...just a few bone fragments the size of a guitar pick.
Does anyone believe that DaveScot hasn't been informed otherwise? Doesn't that make him a bald-faced liar? What a surprise. But perhaps he really is one of the many people who has bought into that tired old Creationist myth that is continually repeated, despite the readily available evidence to the contrary. I think the next Cdesign Proponentsist textbook will have separate chapters on the teeny-weeny Evinrude, the itty-bitty Yamaha, and now, the wee clutch.
Posted by: mark | August 24, 2008 8:56 AM
Tuned headers, yeah, that's all we need is a bunch of souped up euglena tear-assing around our waterways...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | August 24, 2008 12:25 PM
Cool video!
Posted by: physicalist | August 24, 2008 7:10 PM
DaveScot- The Benny Hill of Blogging - without the high-brow humor.
Posted by: J-Dog | August 24, 2008 9:42 PM
Um, thanks for that J-Dog. I can't imagine Denyse taking part on one of his sketches, though.
Posted by: Bob O'H | August 25, 2008 6:46 AM
The creationists I've known have the same style in their pseudo-science as in their religion -- hunt and pick. Pick a factoid here, plant a one-liner there. They'd never really look through all the evidence on anything. They'd never read the whole Bible, either. Because they feel they already know The Answer to begin with, so they're only scanning for a quotable quote that will buttress a particular argument, whatever material they're perusing at the moment, secular or sacred. It's a pity, because some of them are actually pretty nice people. But you'll never convince them of anything, because you can't use logic.
Posted by: DianaGainer | August 25, 2008 11:43 AM
Oh, sorry, I meant to thank you for the bone pictures. Yes, indeed, much bigger than guitar picks, and much more interesting!
Posted by: DianaGainer | August 25, 2008 11:46 AM
Some good pictures of Neanderthal skulls here:
http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/ha/neand.htm
...Reasonably sure all of those are bigger than guitar picks, yes.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | August 29, 2008 3:37 PM