"HUMAN EVOLUTION POORLY UNDERSTOOD" - AS ANOTHER THEORY FAVORED BY "SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS" BITES THE DUST

NYTIMES:

Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.

Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens — a 1.44 million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55 million-year-old Homo erectus — said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.

If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before. It means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between two million and three million years ago, a time when fossil hunters had drawn a virtual blank.

Although the findings do not change the relationship of Homo erectus as a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists said, the surprisingly diminutive erectus skull implies that this species was not as humanlike as once thought.

Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood.

The SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS had for decades been that Homo erectus and Homo habilus evolved one after the other. Now, that SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS has to be throw out.

This comes the sane week that another theory which had for decades been the SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS had to be throw out, too: that Caucasians in Europe descended from Africa; new evidence suggests we came from Asia.

These two cases should stand as a warning to anyone and everyone who argues that "warmening"/AGW must be true because "it's the scientific consensus!"

What is the "PC theory" at any given time is subject to change because CONSENSUS IS NOT PROOF.

Only the scientific method can offer proof.

Other than that, logical arguments and logical conjectures merely make one hypothesis more plausible than another.

We should not wreck our economy and our industries and allow the federal government - or any "world government" to have more control over our lives and liberty because many scientists find one theory more plausible than another. That's merely "scientific consensus" and it should carry little to no weight in the political realm. Because it is subject to change. It has ALWAYS been subject to change. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW SCIENCE WORKS!