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old) fitted together forming a smooth 'U-shape'. This suggested that the creature in question was human-like as against ape-like.
Simons was supported in his study by David Pilbeam, a British anthropologist. Their ancient creature Ramapithecus was said to be, 'the earliest known forerunner of man'
(Encyclopedia of Evolution - Richard Mimer p.384)
Pilbeam suggested that Ramapithecus probably walked about on two legs, not four; used tools to prepare its food; hunted and had a social life more complex than any ape. (Bones of Contention-Roger Lewin p.87) Strangely, Pilbeam didn't say whether Ramapithecus used a toothbrush or not!
In 1976, Pilbeam's field team working in Pakistan unearthed a new fossil of the creature. The jaw was complete and it had a clear 'V-shape' and not the human-like 'U-shape'. Pilbeam went back to the original fossils and noticed for the first time that the pieces could easily be pieced together differently making the dental arch look angular rather than curved. The teeth, on closer inspection were not so human-like after all. When further fragments of the face came to light soon after, it was seen to resemble an ancestral orang-utan!!
For more than 20 years the myth of Ramapithecus
reigned in evolutionary academic circles.
"Many evolutionary schemes are in fact dominated by theoretical assumptions that are largely divorced from data derived from fossils …"
David Pilbeam quoted by Richard Lewin in Bones of Contention - p.44
One in the ribs for Boaz
New Scientist - 28 April, 1983: An article by Ian Anderson
'Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin's rib' Dr. Noel Boaz of New York University claimed that a 5 inch piece of bone he had found at Sahabi in Libya, belonged to a superfamily of Hominoidea.
Dr. Tim White in the August (1982) issue of Natural History, a monthly magazine published by the American Museum of Natural History, claimed the bone was from something like the modem Pacific white-sided dolphin. Its size and shape shows it was "one of the posterior ribs of a small cetacean similar to species of the modem dolphin."
Dr. White, an anthropologist from University of California, strongly criticized Boaz's findings, saying that he put "the incident on a par with two other embarrassing faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig's tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or 'Piltdown Man', the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the 'earliest Englishman'."
"The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid, that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone." Dr. Tim White
and when pieced together gave a cranial capacity from 900 to 1200 cc; values midway between higher apes and man. Peking Man was greeted as another missing link. However, Professor of Palaeontology, M. Boule, concluded that the skulls were those of apes that had been killed by men who had smashed open their skulls at the base in order to eat their brains. Peking Man was nothing more than 'a mere hunter's prey'. The bones went missing during the Second World War, when they were captured by the Japenese. This is still the case today, so it can be said of Peking Man, that he is a real 'Missing Link'!!
Peeping under the floor-boards!
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