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<blockquote data-quote="MANTI5" data-source="post: 7665575" data-attributes="member: 627711">&quot;Following another admittedly gigantic gap in the fossil record, another fossil creature had been presented as the first humanlike ape. It was said to have lived about 14*million years ago and was called Ramapithecus—Rama’s ape (Rama was a mythical prince of India). Fossils of it were found in India about half a century ago. From these fossils was constructed an apelike creature, upright, on two limbs. Of it Origins stated: “As far as one can say at the moment, it is the first representative of the human family.”What was the fossil evidence for this conclusion? The same publication remarked: “The evidence concerning Ramapithecus is considerable—though in absolute terms it remains tantalizingly small: fragments of upper and lower jaws, plus a collection of teeth.”&nbsp; Do you think that this was “considerable” enough “evidence” to reconstruct an upright “ape-man” ancestor of humans? Yet, this mostly hypothetical creature was drawn by artists as an “ape-man,” and pictures of it flooded evolutionary literature—all on the basis of jawbone fragments and teeth! Still, as The New York Times reported, for decades Ramapithecus “sat as securely as anything can at the base of the human evolutionary tree.”</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MANTI5, post: 7665575, member: 627711"] "Following another admittedly gigantic gap in the fossil record, another fossil creature had been presented as the first humanlike ape. It was said to have lived about 14*million years ago and was called Ramapithecus—Rama’s ape (Rama was a mythical prince of India). Fossils of it were found in India about half a century ago. From these fossils was constructed an apelike creature, upright, on two limbs. Of it Origins stated: “As far as one can say at the moment, it is the first representative of the human family.” What was the fossil evidence for this conclusion? The same publication remarked: “The evidence concerning Ramapithecus is considerable—though in absolute terms it remains tantalizingly small: fragments of upper and lower jaws, plus a collection of teeth.” Do you think that this was “considerable” enough “evidence” to reconstruct an upright “ape-man” ancestor of humans? Yet, this mostly hypothetical creature was drawn by artists as an “ape-man,” and pictures of it flooded evolutionary literature—all on the basis of jawbone fragments and teeth! Still, as The New York Times reported, for decades Ramapithecus “sat as securely as anything can at the base of the human evolutionary tree.” [/QUOTE]

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