Hominids?

Hi Middle School Friends!

I was checking out your text book like some of you asked me to do and, yeah, found some problems in the hominid dept.

A hominid is an ancestor of humans, and there's been tons of contenders for this honor but no proven winners yet.

Your text book claims that there are three of them. They should have said that some scientists hope to prove that three fossil finds are hominids. No one has proven it yet.

Many scientists suggest that Homo erectus is actually just like us, a Homo sapien. That's what was proven about Neanderthals and that's why Neanderthal isn't in your text book (he was in mine, when I was in middle school!)

Next is Homo habilis. I'm surprised they included him in your text book because scientists are saying now that the fossil remains are actually ape and human remains mixed up. That's what happened with Peking man and Java man (they were in my text books too :)!

Finally we have Lucy! Australopithecus! I love Lucy!

The Lucy Show to Open in Houston
by Lawrence Ford
Associated Press
Essentially an ape-like creature that walked upright from time to time, Lucy “was quite like a bonobo chimpanzee,” according to ICR president Dr. John Morris, “with a chimp-sized brain, long curved fingers and toes for climbing trees, a protruding face, and large molar teeth.”
Despite Lucy’s celebrity status in the evolutionary sciences, the AP admits that debate “still rages over how close an ancestor to man Lucy would be, as many experts suspect she was anatomically far closer to apes than humans.”

That just means we just don't know if Lucy is a hominid. Your text book should have said that.

So we still don't have any proven ancestors, just us.