"Evolutionary break up sex" b/w humans and chimps

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3871353.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/...545394809.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...051702158.html

And another...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science....ap/index.html

[Victus]

Damn, I was going to post this.

Are we done yet? How much more 'transitional' ancestory do we need to find?

Apparently we can never find enough. Creationists like to point out gaps in the fossil record as evidence for their beliefs. But then anytime a gap is filled they claim that now there are two gaps instead of one. Of course this is a flawed line of argument, but then almost anything that creationists use is.

It's truly ridiculous. When you show these types an Archaeoptyryx, they almost always say, "that looks more like a bird with scales....it isn't a reptile. Find me something that is half reptile, half bird then I'll believe it." But nothing satisfies them.

[Kamikaze189]

Metman07 wrote

But then anytime a gap is filled they claim that now there are two gaps instead of one.

The more evidence for evolution, the weaker it becomes! HAHA! ...Yes, good reasoning from the theist on that one.

Well I'll be a monkeys nephew.

There were some real surprises in that article for me. Humans are still capable of having children with chimpanzees today? Species interbreed in the wild all the time? I was under the apparent misimpression that it was the ability to interbreed which distinguished one species from another. I guess it's back to the books for me.

[nkb]

bokonon wrote

There were some real surprises in that article for me. Humans are still capable of having children with chimpanzees today? Species interbreed in the wild all the time? I was under the apparent misimpression that it was the ability to interbreed which distinguished one species from another. I guess it's back to the books for me.

Even though there is some disagreement, I think the most common indicator of species is the ability to produce offspring that is capable of reproducing.

For example, mules are the product of a donkey and a horse, but are almost always sterile.

bokonon wrote

There were some real surprises in that article for me. Humans are still capable of having children with chimpanzees today? Species interbreed in the wild all the time? I was under the apparent misimpression that it was the ability to interbreed which distinguished one species from another. I guess it's back to the books for me.

No, humans are not capable of producing offspring with chimps. This is because humans have one less chromosome pair than chimps. At some point in the human evolutionary lineage, two chromosomes fused. This distinguishes humans from other great apes.

There is no catch-all definition of what precisely is a species. By the biological species concept, a species is a group of individuals that can reproduce fertile offspring. But yet there are some species which can produce offspring in captivity, but never do in the wild due to isolating mechanisms. Some species look quite different even though they are capable of interbreeding and thus they never breed in the wild. Other species are capable of interbreeding, but their habitats don't overlap in the wild so they don't interbreed.