Quote:Now what I would like to know exactly is where are the bones or fossils of the common ancestor of human and ape? Why haven't they been found? This should not be that hard of a question for you.
This isn't a difficult question, you're right about that. However, you may not like the answer.
Firstly, fossils (any fossils) are not as common as you seem to think - come to that, they aren't as common as we'd like them to be. For an organism to become a fossil, several things need to happen in pretty short order: 1) The organism has to die in the right place. It isn't a lot of good dying in an area where sedimentation doesn't occur, for what should be obvious reasons. 2) The organism has to be of body type that lends itself to fossilization. 3) The organism has to get buried before it gets eaten by another organism. Given the raft of things that need to occur, it's pretty astonishing that we have as many fossils as we do (we can attribute this to the staggeringly large number of organisms that have lived and died in the last 4+ billion years).
Secondly, you're asking for the fossils of a specific species of proto-simian (pre-primate? either one, I suppose). Given that 'species' is one of the smallest levels of taxonomy, this is fairly unlikely to happen.
Thirdly, we have universities and museums filled with - literally - thousands and thousands of primate fossils that show both ape and human traits. If you're looking for the 'missing link', we haven't got it (yet). But what we manifestly DO have is section of the primate web where the missing strands are likely to be. It may very well turn out that there isn't one missing link, but several.
All snarkiness aside, I sincerely hope this helps you understand.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
