Re: Paleo Find ("Millennium Man")

["David Marjanovic" <David.Marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>
To: <dinoland@lycos.com>
Cc: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2000 10:10 PM
Subject: Re: Paleo Find ("Millennium Man")


> WHOA! Hold on,
>      I guess I didn't make my choice clear.  I wasn't talking about skulls
> in Georgia.
>      My pick is the 6 million-year-old ancestors of humans which they
found
> in Kenya.  I think they nicknamed it "Millennium Man" or something like
> that.
>      That increases the length of our human lineage back another 1.6
million
> years.  Far more significant than Microraptor in my opinion.
>                  -----Ken

Not quite. 5.6 million-year-old human remains (unnamed, scrappy, therefore
rarely mentioned) have been known for quite some time, so that 6
million-year-old guy only extends the human lineage by 0.4 Ma. "Millennium
Man" is still important, but to a certain extent it was expected by lots of
people.
        *Microraptor* is significant, mainly because of its size, but I
don't think it was any more arboreal than a cat, probably much less. Like
all other dinosaurs (save a few specialized birds), it couldn't sprawl its
legs, for instance. IMHO, birds only became arboreal after they were capable
of flying at Pygostylia level. I don't support the cursorial hypothesis,
either; more in my paper :.-( ...

P. S.: I couldn't answer earlier because my harddisk has, it seems, crashed
forever. Now I'm writing from a new one.