Yukon fossils represent a pivotal moment in evolution

[Anomalocaris]

Yet science must consider ALL of the evidence, Chuck, otherwise it becomes like religion.

That's a low blow, Min.

The sorting of fossils is complete. Dinosaurs have never been found in the same layer as trilobites; trilobites have never been seen together with human remains; dinosaur remains have not been found with human remains.

A single human skeleton found next to a trilobite in the rock strata would upset the theory of evolution. Creationists try to invent such "finds" periodically because they are little more than fanatical liars. Should such a legitimate find be made I would consider the TofE disproven. Of course, that would do nothing to show that bible bullshit was "true" in its place.... a fact which creationists never consider.

A single human skeleton found next to a trilobite in the rock strata would not upset the theory of evolution. It would, however, upset creationists by proving that someone was willing to improve the human gene pool by killing in situ any creationist caught trying to doctor fossil evidence of trilobite.



Seriously, fossil evidence that some previously undiscovered lineage of trilobite did not die off during the Permain extinction and crytically survive to cohabit the earth with humans would not be a earth shattering event, and does not even tangentially challenge evolution, nor require any major alteration of the story of life on earth as had been informed by evolutionary biology and paleontology. Similar discovery are made all the time. There is another ancient lineage of once widespread arthropod called anamalocarid, which happen to be my avatar, that had also previously been thought to have gone completely extinct in Cambrian. Recently it was discovered to survive still in significantly altered, but still easily recongizable, form the devonian period. The thing survived almost an extre hundred million years without there being any fossils that we've discovered.

More relevent to our story is the fact that earliest fossils of trilobite, as well as anamalocarid, was from some place in China. Yet we do not take too seriously the notion that these creatures originated in what is to become China near where we found our earliest fossils. This is because:

1. even though Chinese fossils predated fossils from elsewhere, We are not convinced the difference is caused by different distribution of the creatures at the time of chinese fossils and the time of fossils from other places.

2. there are sufficient amount of development in those unique features that identify trilobite and anamalocaris in the fossils from China that we do not believe those fossils from china were all that close to the first forms of those creatures.

A similar story applies here. For the earliest non-African HE, can we construct a convincing statistical or ecological narrative about why its discovery outside of Africa but not inside Africa really represent the true distribution? Does the earliest non-African HE possess characteristics that define HE in such a modest way that we can really argue that it was indeed something that was very close to the earliest HE? Or is it already so evolve that it most have been separated from still earlier HE by many hundreds of thousands of years, so the fact that the already-discovered non-African HE might predate African forms by just a couple of hundred thousand years really don't mean a whole lot?