This CARTA poster shows pictures of three hominid skulls: Toumaï, Ardi, and Little-Foot. Watch the videos of this CARTA symposium, and read about these three hominids Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus, and Australopithecus. They all have some traits that are human-like, and some traits that are chimpanzee-like. From this, paleoanthropologists like to think that the last common ancestor of chimps and humans had many human-like traits. I think the last common ancestor was like a chimp, gorilla, and orangutan, and had no human-like traits.

An obvious hypothesis should be that these extinct, dead-end species are hybrids of early humans and apes (or a mix of bones from two species, like Lucy or Piltdown Man). But the hypothesis that early hominids could be hybrids goes unmentioned in paleoanthropology. It would diminish funding and status for working with these fossils. Paleoanthropologists give us lots of species, and lots of fascinating speculation, but avoid the hypothesis that for any of their species, hominid = hybrid. 

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Paleohuman.com

In the CARTA lecture by Haile-Selassie, a model of Ardipithecus is shown with human-like traits (minute 17:02).
Haile-Selassie explains:
 

If Ardipithecus was a real creature, and not a misinterpretation, couldn't it have been a hybrid? Shouldn't paleoanthropologists be mentioning the hybrid-hypothesis, and that the last common ancestor may have simply been a chimpanzee?

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Paleohuman.com

In the CARTA lecture by Berhane Asfaw, a physical model of Ardi's skull is shown, based on digital reconstruction of the fossil fragments. To me the skull looks very much like a chimpanzee, with a projecting face. But Asfaw argues that it is less projecting, and has other human-like characteristics. He thinks that the last common ancestor also had these characteristics.

In his conclusion he says: 

"So the information that we got from Ardipithecus is more information about what our ancestors, our common ancestors, might have looked like. And at least from this information we know that they don't look like chimpanzees."



On his Conclusion picture, Asfaw writes:
"This may suggest that the African apes (i.e. chimpanzee and gorilla) are very derived (i.e. much evolved) in their craniodental complex from the (human-chimpanzee-gorilla-)common ancestor."

Paleoanthropologists want to convince us that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees. They want us to think that chimpanzees have evolved as much as humans since the split. But that model is based on scanty fossil evidence and wishful thinking.

Since modern chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are similar, it is more logical to think that their common ancestor was similar, and only humans have changed. That orthodox model of evolution—long periods without significant change—is called 'punctuated equilibrium'.

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Paleohuman.com

Watch Ronald Clarke's sleight-of-hand in his CARTA lecture about the Australopithecus 'Little-Foot'. He used the legs and thigh bones of one skeleton, but ignored the arm bone (radius) of what looks to be the same skeleton. For one arm and a hand, he used bones from another place in the cave. The skull and other arm came from another place. For the foot and ankle, he used bones from the collection of a medical school. He felt certain that all these bones were from the same individual. For more details, read my manuscript on 'fictional fossil evidence' and watch the lecture video.

This Australopithecus 'skeleton' was not a hybrid, as other Australopithecus fossils may be. This one is a composite of different bones taken mostly from a cave known for many monkey bones. 


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Paleohuman.com