Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis

Lubenow, Marvin L.  Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils.  Baker Books, Grand Rapids.  Revised edition.  2004.  The most widely read young-earth book on human fossils, by a pastor and teacher who studied the fossils for decades.  It argues that every fossil is either human or ape, that Homo erectus and the Neanderthals were human, and that Homo habilis is a mixture with a few possibly human pieces.  This revised edition drops the 1992 edition's appendix on the KBS Tuff.

1. 1a.

   Page 120:  “Homo habilis is a flawed taxon because it is a mixture of some fossils that might be human (KNM-ER 1470, 1481, and 1590) and other fossils that are definitely not human.” ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 299:  ““Johnny’s Child” (Olduvai Hominid 7, so named because it was found by Louis's son Jonathan)”. ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 299:  “The fossil taxon known as Homo habilis is simply a gang of australopithecines in disguise.”  The chapter section that follows is headed "Homo habilis: The Little Man Who Isn't There." ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 300:  “The problem of Homo habilis was solved in 1986. Tim White, working with Don Johanson and others at Olduvai Gorge, discovered a partial adult skeleton designated Olduvai Hominid 62 and dated at about 1.8 Mya.”  “The surprise was that the body of this Homo habilis adult was not large, as Homo habilis was supposed to be. It was actually smaller than the Australopithecus afarensis fossil known as Lucy, just a bit more than three feet tall and rather apelike.”  “Thus there was strong evidence that the category known as Homo habilis was not a legitimate taxon but was composed of a mixture of material from two (possibly three) separate taxa”. ↩ ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 329:  “There is no question that bias intervened in the reconstruction of skull 1470. Tucked under, the skull would look much like a modern human. Instead, the face was given an australopithecine slant to make it look more like a transitional form. Having said all that, I still have put a question mark by it. What we can say at the present time is that there is no compelling reason why it could not be human.” ↩ ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 328:  “The original fossil had been found in hundreds of pieces and was assembled over a six-week period by Alan Walker, Bernard Wood, and Richard Leakey’s wife, Meave.” ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 328:  “The skull, found at the same level as the leg bone but not in association with it, has been the source of controversy ever since it was found in 1972.” ↩

8. 1h.

   Page 128:  “The cranial capacity of Homo erectus goes from about 780 cc … to about 1225 cc (the largest Peking Man skull, Zhoukoudian X).”  The omitted words list the smallest skulls, among them one from Dmanisi. ↩

9. 1i.

   Page 310:  “Skull KNM-ER 1470 has a cranial capacity of about 800 cc and may well be human. Without KNM-ER 1470, the average of eight Homo habilis (a flawed taxon) skulls is 615 cc”. ↩

10. 1j.

    Page 332:  “Fourth, all of the fossils ascribed to the Homo habilis category are contemporary with Homo erectus. Thus Homo habilis not only did not evolve into Homo erectus, it could not have evolved into Homo erectus.” ↩

Tobias, P. V.  “The Olduvai Bed I Hominine with Special Reference to its Cranial Capacity.”  Nature 202(4927):3–4.  Apr 4, 1964.  Phillip Tobias's estimate of the brain size of OH 7, the child that became the type of Homo habilis.  Only the two parietal bones survive, so he measured the volume beneath them and scaled it up by the same ratio in four known skulls, two australopiths and two Homo erectus.  The result fell between the largest australopith and the smallest erectus then known.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 2a.

   Page 3:  “On February 25, 1961, Dr. L. S. B. Leakey announced the discovery of the greater part of a juvenile hominid mandible, as well as parts of two parietals, at the site F.L.K.N.N. 1 in Bed 1 at Olduvai Gorge, Tanganyika”. ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 3:  “Even between the pongids and hominines, there is almost an overlap, since one large male gorilla has a capacity of 752 c.c. (Schultz 1962), while the smallest hominine capacity hitherto reported in an apparently normal member of Homo erectus (Pithecanthropus) is 775 c.c.” ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 4:  “The estimates range from 642.7 to 723.6 c.c., with central values of 673.5 and 680.8. All these values lie in the area between the largest known australopithecine (530 c.c.— or 600 c.c. as the estimate for an adult corresponding to the Taung child, Tobias) and the smallest known Homo erectus capacity (775 c.c.).”  The scan prints decimal points as hyphens ("642-7"); the decimals are confirmed by Tobias's own arithmetic on the same page. ↩

Leakey, L. S. B. et al.  “A New Species of the Genus Homo from Olduvai Gorge.”  Nature 202(4927):7–9.  Apr 4, 1964.  The paper that named Homo habilis, with OH 7 as its type and OH 4, 6, 8, 13 and 16 as paratypes.  To fit the fossils into Homo it rewrote the definition of the genus, replacing a single brain-size cut-off with a range starting at about 600 cc.  It gives no dates.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 3a.

   Page 7:  “Until now, the definition of Homo has usually centred about a ‘cerebral Rubicon’ variably set at 700 c.c. (Weidenreich), 750 c.c. (Keith) and 800 c.c. (Vallois).” ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 7:  “the structure of the pelvic girdle and of the hind-limb skeleton is adapted to habitual erect posture and bipedal gait; the fore-limb is shorter than the hind-limb”.  “the capacity is (on the average) large relative to body-size and ranges from about 600 c.c. in earlier forms to more than 1,600 c.c.”  From the "Revised diagnosis of the genus Homo." ↩ ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 8:  “Type. The mandible with dentition and the associated upper molar, parietals and hand bones, of a single juvenile individual from site F.L.K.N.N. I, Olduvai, Bed I.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 9:  “The fossil human remains representing the new species Homo habilis have been found in Bed I and in the lower and middle part of Bed II. Two of the sites, M.K. I and F.L.K.N.N. I, are geologically older than that which yielded the skull of the australopithecine Zinjanthropus. One site, F.L.K. I, has yielded both Australopithecus (Zinjanthropus) and remains of Homo habilis”. ↩ ↩

Walter, Robert C. et al.  “Laser-fusion 40Ar/39Ar dating of Bed I, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.”  Nature 354:145–149.  Nov 14, 1991.  The single-crystal argon-argon dating of the volcanic layers in Bed I at Olduvai, the beds that hold OH 7 and most of the first habilis fossils.

1. 4a.

   Section Abstract:  “These dates reveal that the fossiliferous deposits of middle to upper Bed I, a period of significant biological and climatic change, comprise an extremely brief interval of time, from 1.80 Myr to 1.75 Myr.” ↩ ↩

Spoor, Fred et al.  “Reconstructed Homo habilis type OH 7 suggests deep-rooted species diversity in early Homo.”  Nature 519(7541):83–86.  Mar 5, 2015.  A virtual reconstruction of the distorted OH 7 jaw and parietals from CT scans.  It found a primitive, afarensis-like jaw, a larger brain than earlier estimates, and a jaw shape that does not fit the rudolfensis fossils, and it argued that the habilis line is older than 2.3 million years.

1. 5a.

   Section Abstract:  “the 1.8-million-year-old H. habilis holotype”.  “The reconstructed mandible is remarkably primitive, with a long and narrow dental arcade more similar to Australopithecus afarensis than to the derived parabolic arcades of Homo sapiens or H. erectus.”  “Importantly, the jaw morphology of OH 7 is incompatible with fossils assigned to Homo rudolfensis and with the A.L. 666-1 Homo maxilla.”  “At between 729 and 824 ml it is larger than any previously published value, and emphasizes the near-complete overlap in brain size among species of early Homo.”  “Differences between species of early Homo appear to be characterized more by gnathic diversity than by differences in brain size, which was highly variable within all taxa.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Johanson, Donald C. et al.  “New partial skeleton of Homo habilis from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.”  Nature 327(6119):205–209.  May 21, 1987.  The description of OH 62, the first skeleton tied to a habilis skull.  It placed the skull with habilis and reported that the body was small and long-armed like an early australopith, which overturned the expectation of a human-like habilis body.

1. 6a.

   Section Abstract:  “A new partial skeleton of an adult hominid from lower Bed I (about 1.8 Myr ago), Olduvai Gorge, is described. This specimen's craniodental anatomy indicates attribution to Homo habilis, but its postcranial anatomy, including small body size and relatively long arms, is strikingly similar to that of some early Australopithecus individuals.” ↩

Hartwig-Scherer, Sigrid.  “Apes or Ancestors?  Interpretations of the Hominid Fossil Record Within Evolutionary & Basic Type Biology.”  Mere Creation:  Science, Faith & Intelligent Design, 212–235.  InterVarsity Press.  Edited by William A. Dembski.  1998.  A chapter by an anthropologist with a Zurich doctorate on hominoid growth who co-wrote the 1991 study of OH 62's limbs with R. D. Martin and who works within created-kind ("basic type") biology.  It reviews the hominin fossils, argues that the habilis group belongs with the australopiths, and suggests that the "habilis complex" mixes two created kinds.

1. 7a.

   Page 225:  “They themselves noted that the humerofemoral index is “close to 95%” (AL 288-1 85%, Homo 72%, Pan approximately 100%).”  "They" are Johanson and colleagues, 1987. ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 226:  “In fact, at 25 kg, the average body weight estimate for OH 62 (Hartwig-Scherer and Martin 1991) is almost 20 percent less than the average body weight estimate for AL 288-1.” ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 228:  “If OH 62 is a specimen of Homo habilis, this taxon should be excluded from the genus Homo sensu stricto.”  “It is suggested that the habilis complex may be an artificial combination of two inferred basic types: the Homininae (H. erectus: mainly the postcranial specimens of Kenya) and the Australopithecinae (habilis group). Whether the rudolfensis group belongs to the australopithecine basic type or to the human basic type or even to a third, hitherto undefined basic type is not yet settled.” ↩

Haeusler, Martin, and Henry M. McHenry.  “Body proportions of Homo habilis reviewed.”  Journal of Human Evolution 46(4):433–465.  2004.  A re-examination of the two fragmentary skeletons, OH 62 and KNM-ER 3735, on which the claim of ape-like habilis proportions rests.  It finds the arm-to-leg shaft ratio within the human range on a different estimate of OH 62's missing femur length, while the forearm stays long.

1. 8a.

   Section Abstract:  “The upper limb of the better-preserved OH 62 from Olduvai Gorge is long and slender, but its hindlimb is represented mainly by the proximal portion of a thin femur of uncertain length. The present analysis shows that upper-to-lower limb shaft proportions of both OH 62 and AL 288-1 (A. afarensis) fall in the modern human range of variation, although OH 62 also falls inside that of chimpanzees due to their overlap in small individuals.”  “Femur length of OH 62 can only be estimated by comparison.”  “suggesting that the relative length of OH 62's leg may have been human-like. Brachial proportions, however, remained primitive.” ↩ ↩

Richmond, Brian G. et al.  “Early hominin limb proportions.”  Journal of Human Evolution 43(4):529–548.  2002.  Statistical tests of limb proportions in four early partial skeletons, including OH 62 and Lucy, against the variation in living apes and humans.

1. 9a.

   Section Abstract:  “Although the difference in humerofemoral proportions between OH 62 and AL 288-1 does not exceed variation in the extant samples, it is rare.”  “it may be premature to consider H. (or Australopithecus) habilis as having more apelike limb proportions than those in A. afarensis.”  “underscores the primitive body design of H. habilis”. ↩

Leakey, R. E. F.  “Evidence for an advanced Plio-Pleistocene hominid from East Rudolf, Kenya.”  Nature 242(5394):447–450.  1973.  Richard Leakey's first report of KNM-ER 1470 and the leg bones found near it.  He put the skull in Homo without naming a species and, on the KBS Tuff date then accepted, gave it an age of about 2.9 million years.

1. 10a.

   Section Abstract:  “Four specimens collected last year from East Rudolf are provisionally attributed to the genus Homo. One, a cranium KNM-ER 1470, is probably 2.9 million years old.” ↩

Gish, Duane T.  Evolution:  The Fossils Still Say NO!  Institute for Creation Research.  1995.  The 1995 revision of a young-earth classic by a biochemist who debated evolutionists for decades.  Its chapter on human origins treats Homo habilis and all the australopiths as apes and leans on Bromage's work on the 1470 face.

1. 11a.

   Page 264:  “The estimated cranial capacity of 800 c.c. (other estimates have been somewhat lower), and the morphology of the calvaria (skull cap), Leakey believed, warranted inclusion of the fossil in the genus Homo”. ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 268:  “Thus, the reconstruction of the skull and face of KNM-ER 1470 that was displayed in National Geographic, science journals, and newspapers world-wide was actually incorrect and made the specimen look humanlike rather than apelike.” ↩

3. 11c.

   Page 279:  “We conclude that the australopithecines (A. africanus, H. africanus, H. habilis, A. boisei, A. robustus, A. afarensis) were apes, with no genetic relationship either to man or to any of the extant apes.” ↩

Du, Andrew et al.  “Pattern and process in hominin brain size evolution are scale-dependent.”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285:20172738.  2018.  A study of brain size through time in fossil hominins.  Its supplementary Table S1 lists every published brain volume for each skull with its source and date range, which makes it a convenient check on figures quoted elsewhere.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 12a.

   Table S1:  Values in cc, each with the source the table names:  KNM-ER 1470, 752.5 (Holloway et al. 2004) and 760;  KNM-ER 1590, 825 and 750;  KNM-ER 1805, 582;  KNM-ER 1813, 509, 500 and 478;  OH 7, 687, 674, 675, 587.5, 690 and 796 (the last from Spoor et al. 2015);  OH 13, 650, 673, 655 and 618;  OH 16, 638;  OH 24, 590, 594 and 556;  Dmanisi D4500, 546;  D2700, 600;  KNM-ER 42700, 691;  OH 12, 727 and 656;  KNM-ER 3733, 848 and 715;  KNM-WT 15000, 909;  Sts 5, 485, 482 and 475;  MH1, 420.  Date ranges are the table's minimum and maximum dates. ↩ ↩ ↩

Joordens, Josephine C. A. et al.  “Improved age control on early Homo fossils from the upper Burgi Member at Koobi Fora, Kenya.”  Journal of Human Evolution 65(6):731–745.  2013.  A study of the magnetic record and strontium-isotope climate cycles in the beds below the KBS Tuff where 1470 was found.  It ties the fossils to the base of the Olduvai magnetic subchron and to the KBS Tuff date, and gives 1470 its current age by interpolating a sedimentation rate.  Page numbers below are those of the accepted manuscript.  Mirror:  Insu.hal.science

1. 13a.

   Section Age control on hominin fossils, manuscript page 19:  “We have established that KNM-ER 1470 derives from 26 m below bC2n, 19 m below the base of the Pre-Olduvai event, and 5 m above the base of the section (reported here).”  “Our calculation results in an age of 2.058 ± 0.034 Ma for KNM-ER 1470 (Table 6).”  "bC2n" is the base of the Olduvai normal magnetic subchron;  the average sedimentation rate used is "23.0 ± 9 cm/kyr". ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 13b.

   Section Magnetostratigraphy, Results, manuscript page 10:  “In the UBU section of Area 131, the base of the Olduvai chron is situated between the 30.2 and 32.0 m levels (14.0 to15.8 m below the KBS Tuff; Fig. 4a, b, c).”  Section Magnetostratigraphy, Results, manuscript page 11:  “From the base of the UBU section up to ~ 35 m below the KBS Tuff (m level 11) in Area 131 we found exclusively reversed polarities (Table 3, Fig. 4b, c).” ↩

Lewin, Roger.  Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins.  New York: Simon & Schuster.  1987.  A history of the great disputes in the study of human origins by a science journalist who worked with Richard Leakey, built on interviews and on the participants' letters.  Its long account of the KBS Tuff quotes letters on both sides and reports a re-dating of the original crystals that Lewin himself arranged.

1. 14a.

   Page 160:  “One point of uncertainty was the angle at which the face attached to the cranium. Alan Walker remembers an occasion when he, Michael Day, and Richard Leakey were studying the two sections of the skull. "You could hold the maxilla forward, and give it a long face, or you could tuck it in, making the face short," he recalls. "How you held it really depended on your preconceptions. It was very interesting watching what people did with it."” ↩

2. 14b.

   Pages 194–195:  “at a conference in Nairobi held in September 1973 they presented 41 separate age determinations on the KBS Tuff, which varied between 223 million and 0.91 million years. Only seven of those 41 measurements came within a quarter of a million years either way of the original 2.61 number, while eight were as close to 1.9.” ↩

3. 14c.

   Page 246:  “Note that the zircon fission track ages of Hurford et al. represent the first attempt at dating young zircons of this kind. These ages apparently agree closely with each other but this is mainly due to the close communication between these authors on track identification and discrimination in these samples.”  “It was never true that Tony and I were doing the work independently of each other.”  The first quotation is Lewin quoting Gleadow's 1980 paper in Nature;  the second is Gleadow speaking to Lewin. ↩

4. 14d.

   Page 249:  “Recently I have had the remainder of the collection of nearly perfect … crystals sent to us in 1969 dated (as an unknown sample) by an independent laboratory — their answer, using the new constants, was 2.3 Myr!”  Frank Fitch writing to Richard Leakey in 1981, as Lewin quotes him;  the laboratory was John Mitchell's at Newcastle.  Page 252:  “The Leakey sample gave 1.87 ± 0.04 [million years]”.  “Further results were forthcoming at the end of February, and they confirmed the 1.87-million-year-date.”  The first quotation on page 252 is Anthony Hurford writing to Lewin in February 1987. ↩

5. 14e.

   Page 250:  “We have found no evidence for a tuff of age ca. 2.4 Ma at Koobi Fora.”  “then the KBS Tuff controversy appears to be left — in the technical realm, that is — with an unresolved mystery.”  The first quotation is Ian McDougall speaking to Lewin.  Page 252:  “A date close to 1.9 million years, however, would be consistent with the crystals having truly come from the KBS Tuff, the erroneous older date having been the result of unexplained problems in the original dating procedure.” ↩ ↩

6. 14f.

   Page 253:  “I can see now that we were seeking ways of justifying that date rather than objectively trying to clarify the evidence”.  John Harris, in a photograph caption.  Harris had supported the older date. ↩

Bromage, Timothy G. et al.  “Craniofacial architectural constraints and their importance for reconstructing the early Homo skull KNM-ER 1470.”  Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry 33(1):43–54.  2008.  A new reconstruction of KNM-ER 1470 that joined face and braincase by the rules of facial growth worked out for mammals by Donald Enlow, the paper's last author.  It gave a more projecting midface and a somewhat smaller brain than the 1970s reconstruction.

1. 15a.

   Section Abstract:  “When evaluated on a biological premise, KNM-ER 1470 is found to have a more prognathic midface than commonly appreciated. The relationship between facial prognathism and cranial capacity also provides an estimate downward for this specimen, from 752cc to ca. 700cc.” ↩ ↩

New York University.  “Man's Earliest Direct Ancestors Looked More Apelike Than Previously Believed.”  ScienceDaily.  Mar 27, 2007.  The university's press release on Bromage's reconstruction, issued when he presented it to a dental research meeting the year before the paper.  It gives no volume in cubic centimetres.

1. 16a.

   “a brain less than half the size of a modern human's”. ↩

Leakey, Meave G. et al.  “New fossils from Koobi Fora in northern Kenya confirm taxonomic diversity in early Homo.”  Nature 488(7410):201–204.  Aug 9, 2012.  The description of a juvenile face, KNM-ER 62000, and two jaws that match KNM-ER 1470.  They give the 1470 type a second, better-preserved example, and the authors use them to argue for two species of early Homo besides erectus.

1. 17a.

   Section Abstract:  “KNM-ER 1470 stands out among other specimens attributed to early Homo because of its larger size, and its flat and subnasally orthognathic face with anteriorly placed maxillary zygomatic roots.”  “KNM-ER 62000, a well-preserved face of a late juvenile hominin, closely resembles KNM-ER 1470 but is notably smaller.”  “The new fossils confirm the presence of two contemporary species of early Homo, in addition to Homo erectus, in the early Pleistocene of eastern Africa.” ↩ ↩

Wood, Bernard, and Mark Collard.  “The Changing Face of Genus Homo.”  Evolutionary Anthropology 8(6):195–207.  1999.  The longer companion to Wood and Collard's Science paper, tracing how the definition of Homo was loosened species by species since Linnaeus.  It includes a list of the species of Homo with their type specimens.  Mirror:  Profmarkcollard.com

1. 18a.

   Page 198:  “This involved Leakey and coworkers relaxing some criteria such as brain size, so that the relatively small-brained (600 to 700 cm3) crania from Olduvai could be included.” ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 198:  “Thus, unless it is the first evidence from Bed I of a novel taxon, OH 62 must belong to H. habilis, the only other hominin species known from that time range at Olduvai Gorge.” ↩

3. 18c.

   Page 199:  “Species Homo rudolfensis (Alexeev, 1986) sensu Wood, 1992. Pliocene, East Africa. Type: KNM-ER 1470, adult cranium. Found in the Upper Burgi Member, Koobi Fora Formation, Area 131 at Koobi Fora, East Turkana, NFD, Northern Kenya, 1972.”  The reference is V. P. Alexeev, The Origin of the Human Race (Moscow:  Progress Publishers, 1986). ↩

Wood, Todd Charles.  “An Evaluation of Homo naledi and "Early" Homo from a Young-Age Creationist Perspective.”  Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B:  Life Sciences 6:14–30.  2016.  Todd Wood's second statistical study of the hominins, re-running his 2010 method on two newer character sets that include Homo naledi and the Dmanisi skulls.  It keeps habilis and rudolfensis in the human kind and sketches a post-Flood, post-Babel history for the fossils.

1. 19a.

   Page 16:  “Additional research supported the recognition of two different species (Lieberman et al. 1988; B.A. Wood 1985, 1992), but Lee and Wolpoff (2005) concluded that the variation observed between KNM-ER 1470 and 1813 is not greater than that observed in samples of conspecific individuals from South African fossil sites, thus implying that both types are members of the same species. With the discovery of Kenyanthropus, Leakey et al. (2001) suggested that KNM ER-1470 could be transferred to Kenyanthropus. After the discovery of additional fossils similar to KNM ER-1470, however, Leakey et al. (2012) retained the species in Homo.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 17:  “T.C. Wood (2010) attributed the creationist disagreements to the same problems that plague conventional anthropology: fragmentary specimens and small sample sizes.” ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 21:  “The present results show the same correlations, including Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis.”  Page 22:  “Consequently, if the present study is correct in its conclusions, young-age creationists have seriously underestimated the variability of the human holobaramin.” ↩ ↩

4. 19d.

   Page 24:  “Second, if the Caucasus region is the source of post-Flood human dispersal, why do we not see more evidence of early human fossils from the Caucasus region?”  “Dmanisi is less than 200 miles from the mountains believed to be the mountains of Ararat.” ↩

Blumenschine, Robert J. et al.  “Late Pliocene Homo and Hominid Land Use from Western Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.”  Science 299(5610):1217–1221.  2003.  The report of OH 65, an upper jaw and lower face from western Olduvai dated to 1.84–1.79 million years, found with stone tools and cut-marked bones.  The authors argue that it matches KNM-ER 1470 and that both fit within habilis, which would make rudolfensis unnecessary.

1. 20a.

   Section Abstract:  “The hominid shows strong affinities to the KNM ER 1470 cranium from Kenya (Homo rudolfensis), a morphotype previously unrecognized at Olduvai. ER 1470 and OH 65 can be accommodated in the H. habilis holotype, casting doubt on H. rudolfensis as a biologically valid taxon.” ↩

Spoor, Fred et al.  “Implications of new early Homo fossils from Ileret, east of Lake Turkana, Kenya.”  Nature 448(7154):688–691.  Aug 9, 2007.  The report of a late habilis upper jaw and a very small erectus skull from Ileret.  Together they show the two species living in the same basin for a long time, which the authors take as evidence against habilis turning into erectus in a single line.

1. 21a.

   Section Abstract:  “A partial maxilla assigned to H. habilis reliably demonstrates that this species survived until later than previously recognized, making an anagenetic relationship with H. erectus unlikely. The discovery of a particularly small calvaria of H. erectus indicates that this taxon overlapped in size with H. habilis”.  “suggest that these two early taxa were living broadly sympatrically in the same lake basin for almost half a million years.” ↩ ↩

Villmoare, Brian et al.  “Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia.”  Science 347(6228):1352–1355.  2015.  The description of LD 350-1, half of a lower jaw found on the surface at Ledi-Geraru, now the oldest fossil assigned to Homo.  Its age comes from two dated ash layers and an assumed sedimentation rate, not from the bone.  Page numbers below are those of the first online release.

1. 22a.

   Section first-release version, page 1:  “The specimen, securely dated to 2.80-2.75 Ma, combines derived morphology observed in later Homo with primitive traits seen in early Australopithecus.”  “The hominin specimen, found by Chalachew Seyoum on January 29, 2013, comprises the left side of an adult mandibular corpus”. ↩

2. 22b.

   Section first-release version, page 1:  “The LD 350-1 mandible was recovered on the surface of finely bedded fossiliferous silts 10 m conformably above the Gurumaha Tuff”.  “An upper bounding age for LD 350-1 is provided by an adjacent, downfaulted younger block that contains the 2.665 ± 0.016 Ma Lee Adoyta Tuff.”  “Applying a sedimentation rate of either 14 cm/kyr from the Lee Adoyta fault block or 30 cm/kyr from the Hadar Formation (5) provides age estimates of 2.77 Ma and 2.80 Ma, respectively, for LD 350-1.”  The same page dates the Gurumaha Tuff to 2.842 ± 0.007 million years. ↩ ↩

Hawks, John et al.  “Comment on "Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia".”  Science 348(6241):1326.  2015.  A short reply by the Australopithecus sediba team arguing that the Ledi-Geraru jaw was compared with mis-measured sediba jaws.

1. 23a.

   Section Abstract:  “When correctly used, these data demonstrate that specimen LD 350-1 cannot be unequivocally assigned to the genus Homo.” ↩

Villmoare, Brian et al.  “Response to Comment on "Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia".”  Science 348(6241):1326.  2015.  The Ledi-Geraru team's answer to Hawks and colleagues.

1. 24a.

   Section Abstract:  “Our reexamination of the evidence confirms that LD 350-1 falls outside of the pattern that A. sediba shares with Australopithecus and thus is reasonably assigned to the genus Homo.” ↩

Wood, Bernard, and Mark Collard.  “The Human Genus.”  Science 284(5411):65–71.  1999.  The most-cited argument for removing habilis and rudolfensis from Homo.  It defines a genus by shared ancestry and a shared way of life, then scores each fossil species on body size, body shape, locomotion, teeth and jaws, growth and relative brain size.  Mirror:  Profmarkcollard.com

1. 25a.

   Page 66:  “The Cerebral Rubicon is problematic because absolute cranial capacity is of questionable biological significance”.  “We suggest, therefore, that a genus should be defined as a species, or monophylum, whose members occupy a single adaptive zone.” ↩

2. 25b.

   Page 67:  “Homo monophyly is only weakly supported by the three studies.”  “In contrast, neither H. habilis nor H. rudolfensis can be assumed with any degree of reliability to be more closely related to H. sapiens than to the australopiths.” ↩

3. 25c.

   Page 67:  “Homo habilis is the smallest of the species in the second group, with an estimated body mass of just 34 kg.” ↩ ↩

4. 25d.

   Page 68:  “If OH 62 and KNM-ER 3735 (2, 9) are properly attributed to H. habilis, then that species had body proportions similar to those of the australopiths”.  “Together these data suggest that H. habilis was capable of both terrestrial bipedalism and efficient arboreal activity.” ↩

5. 25e.

   Page 69:  “Thus, both H. habilis and H. rudolfensis are apparently more similar in their dental development to the African great apes than they are to H. sapiens”. ↩

6. 25f.

   Page 69, table 4:  Absolute cranial capacity and relative brain size:  H. habilis 552 cm³, 2.72;  H. rudolfensis 752 cm³, 2.76;  A. africanus 457 cm³, 2.66;  H. sapiens 1,355 cm³, 3.08. ↩

7. 25g.

   Page 70:  “Thus, even though the teeth and jaws of H. habilis are comparatively small in absolute terms, when related to a body size proxy the components of the masticatory apparatus match those of Australopithecus and Paranthropus more closely than they do those of H. sapiens.” ↩

8. 25h.

   Page 70:  “we recommend that, for the time being, both H. habilis and H. rudolfensis should be transferred to the genus Australopithecus.”  “The transfer will almost certainly make Australopithecus paraphyletic, and the genus will subsume an impressive range of cranial morphology”. ↩

McHenry, Henry M.  “Body size and proportions in early hominids.”  American Journal of Physical Anthropology 87(4):407–431.  1992.  Body-mass estimates for early hominin species from 78 equations applied to 95 fossils, mostly from the size of leg joints.  The results depend on whether human or ape body proportions are assumed.

1. 26a.

   Section Abstract:  “H. habilis, 52 and 32 kg”.  “If hominoid (i.e., ape and human combined) proportions are assumed, the males would be 10 to 23 kg larger and the females 4 to 10 kg larger.”  The first figures are male and female averages assuming human proportions. ↩

Grabowski, Mark et al.  “Body mass estimates of hominin fossils and the evolution of human body size.”  Journal of Human Evolution 85:75–93.  2015.  New body-mass estimates for fossil hominins from equations built on 220 modern people of known weight, using only fossils whose species is reliably known.

1. 27a.

   Section Abstract:  “Instead, we show that there is no reliable evidence that the body size of non-erectus early Homo differed from that of australopiths, and confirm that Homo erectus evolved larger average body size than earlier hominins.” ↩

Kimbel, William H., and Brian Villmoare.  “From Australopithecus to Homo:  the transition that wasn't.”  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371:20150248.  2016.  An essay by the leaders of the Ledi-Geraru team arguing that a genus should be defined by shared ancestry alone, so that habilis stays in Homo even though its anatomy is close to the australopiths.  It also warns how weak the links between early Homo skulls and skeletons are.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 28a.

   Section 1. Introduction:  “Biologists nearly universally agree that monophyly is the one essential criterion for grouping species in a genus.”  Section 2. The changing idea of early Homo:  “Our taxonomy first and foremost needs to reflect the underlying branching pattern”. ↩

2. 28b.

   Section 3. Homo before 2.0 Ma:  “Weak support, however, is support nonetheless.” ↩

3. 28c.

   Section Abstract:  “Early, phylogenetically basal species of the Homo clade resemble generalized australopiths more than they do later species of the clade”.  Section 3. Homo before 2.0 Ma:  “In its craniofacial configuration, Homo habilis is usually found to be the most symplesiomorphic of these early Homo species.” ↩

4. 28d.

   Section 2. The changing idea of early Homo:  “Association of postcranial fossils with early Homo skull morphs is an urgent but risky venture, because so many of the potential associations are based on incomplete and extremely fragmentary remains (e.g. OH 62, KNM-ER 3735, both attributed to H. habilis).” ↩

Cela-Conde, Camilo J., and Francisco J. Ayala.  “Genera of the human lineage.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(13):7684–7689.  2003.  A proposal for the genera of the human line that keeps habilis and rudolfensis in Homo on the anatomy used to define them in 1964, and moves Kenyanthropus into Homo as well.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 29a.

   Section Discussion:  “We agree with the view that K. platyops, H. habilis, and H. rudolfensis should be classified together, but we propose to include them within the genus Homo. H. habilis and H. rudolfensis share the morphological traits that, in 1964, led Leakey, Tobias, and Napier to define Homo as a new taxon.” ↩

Lordkipanidze, David et al.  “A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo.”  Science 342(6156):326–331.  Oct 18, 2013.  The description of Dmanisi Skull 5, the smallest-brained of five skulls from one site in Georgia.  The authors argue that the variation among the five is like that within one chimpanzee population, and so that the early African Homo species may be one variable lineage.

1. 30a.

   Page 327:  “The ECV of skull 5 (546 cm3) represents the smallest of the Dmanisi sample (skulls 1 to 4: 601 to 730 cm3), and it is at the lower end of variation of the H. habilis hypodigm [509 to 687 cm3 (16, 17)].” ↩

2. 30b.

   Page 330:  “morphological diversity in the African fossil Homo record around 1.8 Ma probably reflects variation between demes of a single evolving lineage, which is appropriately named H. erectus.” ↩

Collard, Mark, and Bernard Wood.  “Defining the Genus Homo.”  Handbook of Paleoanthropology, 2107–2144.  Springer.  2nd edition.  Edited by Winfried Henke and Ian Tattersall.  2015.  Collard and Wood's own update of their 1999 review, weighing six newer family-tree studies.  It keeps the 1999 conclusion while conceding that the family-tree evidence on habilis and rudolfensis is weak either way.  Mirror:  Profmarkcollard.com

1. 31a.

   Page 2108:  “We find that, on balance, the available evidence still supports their suggestion that Homo should be reconfigured such that it includes H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens but excludes H. habilis and H. rudolfensis.”  Page 2129:  “but only weak support for the hypothesis that H. habilis and H. rudolfensis are more closely related to H. sapiens than to the types species of any other genus.” ↩

Wood, Bernard.  “Human evolution:  Fifty years after Homo habilis.”  Nature 508:31–33.  2014.  A retrospective on the fiftieth anniversary of the naming of habilis, by one of the authors of the 1999 proposal to remove it from Homo.

1. 32a.

   Page 32:  “So, if H. habilis is added to Homo, the genus has an incoherent mishmash of features. Others disagree, but I think you have to cherry-pick the data to come to any other conclusion. My sense is that handy man should belong to its own genus, neither australopith nor human.”  A reference number after "data" is omitted. ↩

Tattersall, Ian, and Jeffrey H. Schwartz.  Extinct Humans.  Westview Press, Boulder.  2001.  A popular account of the human fossil record by two anthropologists who favour recognising many species, written for general readers.

1. 33a.

   Page 111:  “effectively confirmed the status of H. habilis as an all-embracing “wastebasket” species into which a whole heterogeneous variety of fossils could be conveniently swept.” ↩

Leakey, Richard, and Roger Lewin.  Origins Reconsidered:  In Search of What Makes Us Human.  Abacus, London.  1993.  Richard Leakey's popular account of human origins, written with Roger Lewin and first published in 1992.  The page given is that of the 1993 paperback.

1. 34a.

   Page 112:  “Of the several dozen specimens that have been said at one time or another to belong in this species, at least half probably don't. But there is no consensus as to which 50 percent should be excluded.” ↩

Tattersall, Ian.  “An identity for the inscrutable Homo habilis.”  The Anatomical Record, 546–549.  2026.  A commentary on Grine and colleagues' 2026 description of KNM-ER 64060 and 64061, a partial skeleton from Ileret found with habilis teeth.  Tattersall argues that the new skeleton finally gives habilis a coherent identity, and that it is not Homo.  Mirror:  Ebi.ac.uk

1. 35a.

   “a very modest (hence australopith‐like) body‐mass estimate of 30.7 kg”.  “retained more primitive proportions and was smaller in stature and mass than Homo erectus”.  “a recognizable actor in the hominin evolutionary play, rather than merely a wastebasket into which miscellaneous hominin fossils have been conveniently tossed”.  “the habilis fossils from Olduvai and Ileret fail to qualify as Homo on at least two and maybe all three of these counts.”  The second quotation is Tattersall quoting Grine and colleagues.  The open copy used carries no page numbers. ↩

Wood, Todd Charles.  “Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin.”  Answers Research Journal 3:71–90.  May 5, 2010.  The first statistical test of where the hominin fossils fall in young-earth terms.  Wood re-analysed eight published skull-and-tooth character sets with baraminic distance correlation and multidimensional scaling, and found habilis, rudolfensis and sediba grouped with Homo and apart from the other australopiths and the apes.  It also lists the earlier young-earth placements.

1. 36a.

   Page 71:  “The divergence of opinion among creationists has been exploited by anticreationists (for example, Isaak 2007, p. 106; Miller 2008, pp. 93–95). If humans truly evolved gradually from nonhuman ancestors, then it would come as no surprise that we would have difficulty drawing the line between “human” and “ape.”” ↩

2. 36b.

   Page 81:  “As noted above, Hartwig-Scherer (1999) considers H. habilis an australopith, but Lubenow (2004, pp. 299–301) and Line (2005a) believe some H. habilis specimens might be human. Additional creationists who reject the human status of H. habilis include Gish (1995, p. 279), Hummer (1979), Mehlert (1996), Murdock (2006), and Young (2006). Likewise, though Lubenow (2004, pp. 328–329) and Cuozzo (1977) believe H. rudolfensis to be human, Hartwig-Scherer and Brandt (2007) consider it a kind of ape.” ↩

3. 36c.

   Page 81:  “Most surprising, three controversial taxa appear to be unequivocally grouped with the homininans: Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba.”  “Despite these contradictory opinions, the present results strongly support the classification of all three species in the human holobaramin.” ↩

4. 36d.

   Page 84:  “The lack of postcranial information in this study is especially important, since one of Hartwig-Scherer’s (1998) objections to including H. habilis in the human basic type (= monobaramin) is the ape-like nature of the habilis skeleton OH 62.” ↩

5. 36e.

   Page 86:  “but the central question of what makes a “good” BDC/MDS dataset remains unanswered.” ↩

6. 36f.

   Page 86:  “Any model of post-Babel distribution must account for the appearance and disappearance of these human species in stratigraphic order.”  “Third, the dispersal of the human population from Babel would presumably have been led by H. habilis and H. rudolfensis, specimens of which appear stratigraphically lower than any other human species.” ↩

Line, Peter.  “Fossil evidence for alleged apemen—Part 1:  the genus Homo.”  Journal of Creation 19(1):22–32.  Apr 2005.  A survey of the fossils assigned to Homo by a creationist writer, arguing that each is either fully human or an ape.  On habilis it sorts individual skulls, and it flags the uncertainty in OH 62's limb proportions.

1. 37a.

   Page 23:  “From a creationist position, habilis is an invalid taxon, being instead a collection of assorted fossils that can either be classified as humans (e.g. as erectus) or as australopithecine apes.”  “If the evaluation of KNM-ER 1813 by White and Wolpoff is correct, then this cranium, with a cranial capacity of only about 509 cm3, may have belonged to a very small human.”  “the cranium of the latter is much more likely that of a human than an ape.”  "The latter" is KNM-ER 1470. ↩

2. 37b.

   Page 24:  “As Stw 53 appears to be an australopithecine ape (see above), this may be the most likely status of OH 62 also.” ↩

Line, Peter.  “Sorting 'early' Homo.”  Journal of Creation 27(1):13–15.  Mar 2013.  Line's second look at habilis, published in the journal and later on the web without page numbers.  Leaning on Bromage's 2008 reconstruction, it moves 1470 and 1813 to the australopiths and calls habilis a mixture made mostly of australopiths, reversing his 2005 view of 1470.

1. 38a.

   Section Faulty reconstruction of KNM-ER 1470:  “However, one reason why KNM-ER 1470 is almost certainly an australopithecine is that the original reconstruction appears to have been faulty.”  Section Where do Homo habilis specimens fit?:  “However, subsequent assessment indicates KNM-ER 1813 belongs with the australopithecines.”  Section Sinking Homo habilis into the australopithecines:  “is a composite species, consisting mostly of australopithecines, but with a few Homo erectus specimens also wrongly categorized.” ↩

Mehlert, A. W.  “Australopithecus and Homo habilis—pre-human ancestors?”  CEN Technical Journal 10(2):219–240.  1996.  A long creationist review of the australopiths and habilis arguing that all are apes or mixtures and that evolutionary bias has shaped their reconstruction.  Read from the web version, which has no page numbers.

1. 39a.

   Section The problematic habilines:  “could we not equally say that individuals classified by some as habilis, with a large range of variation, may represent contemporaneous populations of both Homo erectus (human) and australopithecines? This would mean that ‘habilis’ is a phantom”.  “going by its reconstructed skull, the odds are strong that it too is an extinct ape”. ↩

Rupe, Christopher, and John Sanford.  Contested Bones.  FMS Publications.  2017.  A young-earth book that sorts the hominin fossils into human, ape and "mixed" groups.  Its chapter on Homo habilis argues that the species is a mixture of ape and human bones.

1. 40a.

   Page 173:  “Habilis is not a real species.”  “Habilis is a “wastebasket taxon” —a commixture of Australopithecus and Homo bones.” ↩

2. 40b.

   Page 168:  “What they found was a body that was distinctly ape-like (Australopithecus).”  Page 259:  “A set of anatomically modern leg bones (KNM-ER 1472, 1475, and 1481) were also found during the 1972 field season”.  Page 172:  “Paleo-experts observe some of the bones assigned to Habilis align neatly with the genus Homo (such as a partial foot designated OH 8), and may actually belong to Erectus (Figure 5). Yet other bones align better with Australopithecus (such as OH 62).”  Page 264:  “Unfortunately, when human bones are found too early in the fossil record, such bones are either reclassified (i.e, Mary Leakey’s Homo bones and footprints); or re-dated (Richard Leakey’s 1470 skull and stone tools); or are ignored”. ↩

3. 40c.

   Page 240:  “Recently, paleo-experts have challenged the traditional human-like interpretation of the OH 7 (it might actually belong to the extinct ape Au. boisei).” ↩

4. 40d.

   Page 70:  “The five skulls found in Dmanisi Georgia may reduce this lower estimate to 600 cm³, excluding skull 5 which may actually belong to an ape.”  An endnote to their chapter on Homo erectus;  the scan prints "cm³" as "cm’". ↩

5. 40e.

   Page 254:  “The possibility that the human-looking jaw might be Erectus or H. sapiens was not even considered because they assumed modern humans should not have existed that long ago”. ↩

Hummer, Chris C.  “A plea for caution about skull 1470.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 14(3):168–172.  1977.  An early warning to creationists, by a high-school teacher of anthropology, against claiming 1470 as human, based on its face, its brain size and the doubts of evolutionists such as Alan Walker.

1. 41a.

   Page 168:  “The author urges that Creationists be very cautious in using this skull as evidence; for if it should be decided later that it is not a human skull after all, they would have been leaning on a broken reed.” ↩

2. 41b.

   Page 171:  “A numerical index to express the relationship of the two parts of the skull shows 51.0 to 64.5 to be the range for Australopithecus. The range in Homo is from 30.0 to 45.0. The face/cranium index for Skull 1470 is 59.0, or about in the middle of the australopithecine range.” ↩

Hummer, Chris C.  “Unthinking Homo habilis.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 15(4):212–214.  Mar 1979.  Hummer's follow-up, arguing that the habilis fossils were put in Homo for what they were thought to become rather than for what they look like.

1. 42a.

   Page 214:  “Small-brained Homo habilis is far too primitive a creature to be called a man.” ↩

Mehlert, A. W.  “The rise and fall of skull KNM-ER 1470.”  CEN Technical Journal 13(2):96–100.  1999.  A history of the reconstructions of 1470 and of creationist views on it, concluding that the skull is a large-brained australopith.  It rests heavily on Timothy Bromage's 1992 work on the face.

1. 43a.

   Page 98:  “The creationist view (the correct view in my opinion) is that so-called early Homo is not Homo at all and is nothing more than a larger-brained australopithecine.”  Page 100:  “the alleged habiline ER 1813 is also now seen to belong not to Homo, but to the genus Australopithecus.” ↩

2. 43b.

   Page 100:  “What is clear is that the later reconstructions of skull 1470, along with Bromage’s bone-scanning technique, reveal a craniofacial structure similar to gracile australopithecine, except for the larger brain size.” ↩

Young, Patrick H.  “Body mass estimates and encephalization quotients:  a fresh look at the australopithecines and Homo habilis.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 42(4):217–226.  2006.  A creationist reanalysis of brain size relative to body mass, using McHenry's ape-proportion body-mass equations instead of his human ones.  On that choice habilis is no more brainy for its size than the australopiths;  the choice of equation decides the result.

1. 44a.

   Page 224:  “it is no more encephalized than the australopithecines and pan-troglodytes.” ↩

Menton, David N. et al.  “Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin:  Discussion.”  Answers Research Journal 3:153–158.  Aug 25, 2010.  Three separately signed replies to Wood's 2010 paper:  Menton's on pages 153–155, Habermehl's on 155–156 and DeWitt's on 156–158.  All three reject Wood's placement of sediba;  Menton and DeWitt also doubt it for habilis and rudolfensis.

1. 45a.

   Page 158:  “These changes would bring 1470 more in line with australopithecines.”  “is a false positive result”.  Page 153:  “while others like Homo habilis are fragmentary fossils of questionable relationship to man.”  The page 158 quotations are DeWitt's section;  the page 153 quotation is Menton's. ↩

Cuozzo, John W.  “Skull 1470—a new look.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 14(3):173–176.  1977.  An argument that 1470's ape-like nose and tooth sockets reflect damage after death, so that its owner may have looked like a modern man.

1. 46a.

   Page 173:  “Reasons are presented here for believing that the ape-like features may be due to environmental happenings to the skull after its owner's death. Thus the owner may well have looked very much like a present-day man.” ↩

Mitchell, Elizabeth et al.  “Is the Ledi Jaw the Missing Link in Human Evolution?”  Answers in Genesis.  Mar 21, 2015.  Answers in Genesis's response to the Ledi-Geraru jaw.  It judges the jaw human and not transitional.

1. 47a.

   Paragraph beginning "Thus, while too incomplete to make a definitive judgment":  “this fossil appears to fit within the normal range of human variation, justifying its probable identification as Homo”.  Paragraph beginning "The combined studies in Science and Nature":  “Homo habilis fossils consist of a confusing jumble of fragments about which there is no consensus among evolutionists.” ↩

Sinclair, P., and Todd Charles Wood.  “Revising Hominin Baraminology with Medoid Partitioning and Fuzzy Analysis.”  Answers Research Journal 14:451–462.  2021.  A re-run of Wood's hominin analyses with the clustering methods that a young-earth critic, Reeves, had recommended, to see whether the earlier results depended on the method.

1. 48a.

   Page 459:  “the human holobaramin consists of the well-characterized human forms of H. sapiens, Neandertals, and H. erectus and probably includes the more fragmentary H. heidelbergensis, H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, H. naledi, and Au. sediba.” ↩

Wood, Todd Charles, and P. S. Brummel.  “Hominin Baraminology Reconsidered with Postcranial Characters.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism, 251–266.  Edited by J. H. Whitmore.  2023.  The first young-earth statistical test to use skeletons below the skull:  239 new characters for 14 taxa, scored partly from casts, scans and museum displays.  Rudolfensis has no skeleton and is not in it;  habilis could be scored for about a third of the characters.

1. 49a.

   Page 252, table 1:  Postcranial taxic relevance for H. habilis is 0.331, against 0.836 for all craniodental characters.  Page 263:  “Homo naledi clusters with members of the Lubenow Core in at least 84% of the partitions, and H. georgicus clusters with members of the Lubenow Core in at least 82% of the partitions. Homo habilis clusters with the Lubenow Core in 75% to 80% of the partitions.”  H. georgicus is the authors' label for the Dmanisi fossils;  the "Lubenow Core" is H. sapiens, Neanderthals, H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis. ↩ ↩

Ross, Marcus R. et al.  “Human History from Adam to Abraham:  Integrating Paleoanthropology with a Young-Age Creation Perspective.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism, 66–87.  Edited by J. H. Whitmore.  2023.  The current statement of the Core Academy group's model.  It sorts fossils into human and non-human using six kinds of cultural evidence together with baraminology, places all hominin remains after the Flood, and tabulates the placements given by six young-earth treatments.

1. 50a.

   Page 66:  “provisional human status to “Early Homo” (H. habilis and H. rudolfensis), and uncertain status to Au. sediba.” ↩

2. 50b.

   Page 73, table 2:  Row "Homo habilis & H. rudolfensis":  Lubenow (1992, 2004) "mixed";  Hartwig-Scherer (1998) "Possibly mixed";  Cuozzo (1998) "-";  Rupe & Sanford (2017) "mixed";  Bergman, Line, Tomkins & Biddle (2020) "mixed";  Sinclair & Wood (2021) "human";  Present Study "human".  The table's note 2:  "'mixed' indicates that the authors believe the taxon to be composed of multiple species, including both ape and human remains." ↩

3. 50c.

   Page 74:  “If the fossils included under this name do represent a single hominin form, then the baraminology clustering studies have never failed to include them among the humans. If, as some creationists contend, H. habilis represents a mix of Australopithecus and Homo remains, their status is less clear. To resolve these questions, a careful examination of the fossils (preferably the originals or high-resolution scans) ought to be made and studies of baraminology with artificially mixed taxa ought to be undertaken. This work also should entail skull KNM ER 1470 and associated remains (referred to H. rudolfensis). Skeletal remains of H. habilis are associated with only Oldowan tools, giving limited support from cultural artifacts.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 50d.

   Page 71:  “the simple flakes and cores of Oldowan tools might plausibly have been produced by nonhuman apes, given that similar artifacts have been produced by a population of extant monkeys (Proffitt et al. 2016). Indeed, a recent report implicated Paranthropus in the use of Oldowan-type tools (Plummer et al. 2023).” ↩

5. 50e.

   Page 75:  “general considerations strongly suggest that all hominin remains are post-Flood.” ↩ ↩

6. 50f.

   Page 76:  “One possibility is that the Tower of Babel may be a later innovation that took place only in Mesopotamia and involved only H. sapiens.”  “A second possible explanation is that all globally-distributed hominin remains are indeed post-Babel”. ↩

Line, Peter.  “New Homo erectus crania associated with stone tools raise issues.”  Journal of Creation 34(2):55–61.  Aug 2020.  A creationist survey of 48 Homo erectus skulls that treats all of them, including the smallest from Dmanisi, as human, and concedes that disease cannot explain most of the small ones.

1. 51a.

   Page 57:  “the mean cranial capacity of 48 Homo erectus crania was calculated to be about 934 cc (range of 48 crania was 546 cc to 1260 cc)”.  Page 58:  “there was a huge natural variation in cranial capacity of these humans”. ↩

Lubenow, Marvin L.  Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils.  Baker Book House, Grand Rapids.  1992.  The first edition of Lubenow's book.  Its appendix, "The Dating Game" (pages 247–266), retells the KBS Tuff controversy from the papers in Nature as a case study in circular dating, and is the source most young-earth retellings follow.  The appendix was dropped from the 2004 edition.

1. 52a.

   Page 247:  “A very popular myth is that the radioactive dating methods are an independent confirmation of the geologic time scale and the concept of human evolution. This myth includes the idea that the various dating methods are independent of one another and hence act as controls.” ↩

2. 52b.

   Page 249:  “To check for this extraneous argon, they first dated the raw rocks as they were originally submitted by Leakey. Their analysis gave dates from 212 to 230 million years of age.” ↩

3. 52c.

   Page 249:  “The first question an outside observer would ask is, How did they know? The answer is that the associated fossils told them so.” ↩

4. 52d.

   Page 250:  “I want to stress that the geochronologist does this in absolute sincerity.” ↩

5. 52e.

   Page 251:  “The correlations shown in Figure 4 are not fully independent, and rely partly upon K.Ar and faunal evidence as well as upon the basic polarity data.”  “The starting point for the correlation is the age of 2.61 ± 0.26 Myr obtained by Fitch and Miller from selected sanidine crystals from pumice specimens from the KBS Tuff.”  Lubenow quoting Brock and Isaac, Nature, 1974. ↩

6. 52f.

   Page 253:  “Because 1470 was found below rock dated at 2.61 m.y.a. and above rock dated at 3.18 m.y.a., skull 1470 was estimated to be an incredible 2.9 million years old.”  “The theory of human evolution did not allow for a skull so modern in morphology to be that old.” ↩ ↩

7. 52g.

   Page 255:  “Although Maglio found that the morphology of elephant fossils fit with a 2.5 Myr date, Cooke and Maglio, in 1972, pointed out that fossil pigs from below the KBS Tuff horizon at East Rudolf seemed to correlate best with those from beds dating close to 2 Myr in the Omo River area to the north in Ethiopia.”  Lubenow quoting Curtis and colleagues. ↩

8. 52h.

   Page 265:  “The literature suggests that even if radiometric dating were valid in concept (which it is not), the practical matter of selecting rock samples that can be proven pure and uncontaminated requires an omniscience that is beyond the ability of mortal humans.” ↩

9. 52i.

   Page 265:  “It is entirely possible that if skull 1470 had never been found, the KBS Tuff would still be dated at 2.61 m.y.a.” ↩

10. 52j.

    Page 266:  “The pigs won. In the ten-year controversy over the dating of one of the most important human fossils ever discovered, the pigs won.”  “But in reality, it wasn’t the pigs that won. It was evolution that won. In the dating game, evolution always wins.” ↩

Curtis, G. H. et al.  “Age of KBS Tuff in Koobi Fora Formation, East Rudolf, Kenya.”  Nature 258:395–398.  Dec 1975.  The Berkeley laboratory's first challenge to the 2.61-million-year date, from potassium-argon ages on hand-picked crystals.

1. 53a.

   Section Abstract:  “Samples from area 10 and area 105 give an age of 1.60±0.05 Myr whereas those from area 131 give 1.82±0.04 Myr. Both ages differ from the previously published age of 2.61±0.26 Myr obtained by 40Ar/39Ar technique.” ↩ ↩

Hurford, Anthony J. et al.  “Fission-track dating of pumice from the KBS Tuff, East Rudolf, Kenya.”  Nature 263:738–740.  Oct 1976.  The first fission-track date on the KBS Tuff, which seemed to confirm the older age.  Its authors later said their counts had not been independent of one another.

1. 54a.

   Section Abstract:  “Fission-track dating of zircon separated from two pumice samples from the KBS Tuff in the Koobi Fora Formation, in Area 131, East Rudolf, Kenya, gives an age of 2.44±0.08 Myr for the eruption of the pumice.” ↩

Fitch, F. J. et al.  “40Ar/39Ar dating of the KBS Tuff in Koobi Fora Formation, East Rudolf, Kenya.”  Nature 263:740–744.  Oct 1976.  The original laboratory's defence of the older date, recomputing its 1969 results with new constants and dismissing the younger ages from other laboratories.

1. 55a.

   Section Abstract:  “Recomputation of data obtained in 1969 from this tuff suggests a more accurate apparent iisochron age of 2.42±0.01 Myr for the feldspar”.  “conventional total fusion K–Ar apparent ages in the range 1.6–1.8 Myr obtained from the KBS Tuff by other workers are regarded as discrepant, and may have been obtained from samples affected by argon loss.”  "iisochron" is the abstract's misprint for isochron. ↩ ↩

Curtis, G. H. et al.  “Age of KBS Tuff in Koobi Fora Formation, East Lake Turkana, Kenya.”  Geological Background to Fossil Man, 463–470.  Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.  Edited by W. W. Bishop.  1978.  The book version of the Berkeley laboratory's 1975 paper, with the full tables and the account of how detrital feldspar was found in the dated samples and removed.

1. 56a.

   Page 465:  “The first dates (KA 2816, KA 2817, KA 2818, and later KA 2851) obtained from samples prepared in the manner described showed no agreement (see Table 3). Microscopic examination of the remaining concentrated crystals revealed numerous yellow grains of rounded and altered K-spar, clearly detrital in origin and probably derived from ancient bedrock.”  Pages 465–466:  “To avoid this problem, we carefully crushed individual pumices in a hand mortar, extracting the large phenocrysts with tweezers under a magnifying glass or binocular microscope.” ↩

Gleadow, A. J. W.  “Fission track age of the KBS Tuff and associated hominid remains in northern Kenya.”  Nature 284(5753):225–230.  1980.  A redetermination of the fission-track age with stricter etching and counting, which found detrital zircons of two older ages mixed with the primary ones and gave about 1.87 million years.

1. 57a.

   Section Abstract:  “Primary igneous zircons from five pumice samples give a mean age of 1.87 ± 0.04 Myr. The presence of detrital minerals of two different age groups has important implications for the controversy over the age of this tuff.” ↩

McDougall, Ian et al.  “K–Ar age estimate for the KBS Tuff, East Turkana, Kenya.”  Nature 284:230–234.  Mar 1980.  A third laboratory's potassium-argon dating of crystals from 13 separate pumice lumps in the tuff.

1. 58a.

   Section Abstract:  “Concordant K–Ar ages, averaging 1.89 ± 0.01 Myr, are reported on anorthoclase phenocrysts from 13 pumice clasts collected from within the KBS Tuff or its correlatives.” ↩

McDougall, Ian.  “40Ar/39Ar age spectra from the KBS Tuff, Koobi Fora Formation.”  Nature 294:120–124.  Nov 1981.  Step-heating argon-argon dating of crystals from three pumice lumps, which tests whether argon has been lost or gained since the crystals formed.

1. 59a.

   Section Abstract:  “40Ar/39Ar age spectra on anorthoclase phenocrysts from three pumice clasts in the KBS Tuff yield nearly ideal flat patterns, providing good evidence that the samples have remained undisturbed since crystallization. The ages are concordant at 1.88±0.02 Myr”. ↩

Cerling, T. E., and F. H. Brown.  “Tuffaceous marker horizons in the Koobi Fora region and the Lower Omo Valley.”  Nature 299:216–221.  Sep 1982.  A correlation of the ash layers at Koobi Fora with those of the Shungura Formation in the Omo valley of Ethiopia, the sequence against which the Koobi Fora pigs had been compared.

1. 60a.

   Section Abstract:  “Eight tuffs can now be correlated between the Shungura Formation in the Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia, and the sediments in the Koobi Fora region, Kenya.” ↩

McDougall, Ian.  “K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar dating of the hominid-bearing Pliocene-Pleistocene sequence at Koobi Fora, Lake Turkana, northern Kenya.”  Geological Society of America Bulletin 96(2):159–175.  1985.  The dating of seven ash layers through the whole Koobi Fora sequence, from near its base to above the KBS Tuff.

1. 61a.

   Section Abstract:  “Seven tuffs have been dated, generally yielding concordant ages on multiple samples from each tuff. Results are consistent with the stratigraphic sequence.”  “The Moiti Tuff, ∼30 m above the base of the sequence, has a maximum age of 4.10 ± 0.07 Ma.”  “the KBS Tuff, 1.88 ± 0.02 Ma”. ↩

McDougall, Ian, and Francis H. Brown.  “Precise ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology for the upper Koobi Fora Formation, Turkana Basin, northern Kenya.”  Journal of the Geological Society 163(1):205–220.  2006.  Single-crystal argon-argon dates on about fifteen ash layers in the upper Koobi Fora Formation, which give the KBS Tuff its modern age.

1. 62a.

   Section Abstract:  “KBS Tuff (1.869 ± 0.021 Ma)”. ↩ ↩

This article's calculation.  Ross, Brummel and Wood place all hominin remains after the Flood.⁵⁰  If 1470 lived after the Flood, the KBS Tuff above it erupted after the Flood too, so its crystals hold at most 4,500 years of real decay on Creation Ministries International's figure,⁶⁵ or 5,411 years on Hardy and Carter's earliest Flood, 3386 BC.⁶⁶  The tuff's argon reads 1,869,000 years.⁶²  1,869,000 ÷ 4,500 = 415 and 1,869,000 ÷ 5,411 = 345, so decay must have averaged at least 345 to 415 times today's rate since the eruption.  KNM-ER 1470 at 2,058,000 years gives 457 and 380.¹³  The Ledi-Geraru jaw lies above a tuff dated to 2,842,000 years and is itself put at 2,800,000 to 2,750,000;²² 2,800,000 ÷ 5,411 = 517 and ÷ 4,500 = 622.  If the fossils are also after Babel, as Wood proposed in 2010, the time is shorter and the factors larger.  These are averages:  a decay rate that fell over time would have to run faster still at first. ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field During the Genesis Flood.”  Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism 2:113–126.  1986.  The standard young-earth model of the earth's magnetic reversals, by the young-earth physicist D. Russell Humphreys.  It accepts that the rocks record about fifty reversals and puts them all in the Flood year.

1. 64a.

   Section Conclusion:  “(3) Rapid reversals during the year of the Flood, (4) Large fluctuations continuing for several thousand years after the Flood”.  Section Evidence for Reversals:  “since roughly 50 reversals are recorded in the rocks, our model must average about one reversal per week”. ↩ ↩

“What date would you like?”  Creation 45(2):10.  Apr 2023.  An unsigned news item in Creation Ministries International's magazine.  The article uses its round figure for the time since the Flood.

1. 65a.

   Paragraph 2:  “The caves formed late in Noah’s Flood some 4,500 years ago.” ↩

Hardy, Chris, and Robert Carter.  “The biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth.”  Journal of Creation 28(2):89–96.  2014.  A young-earth paper that works out the earliest and latest dates the biblical numbers allow for creation and the Flood, across the Masoretic, Samaritan and Septuagint texts.

1. 66a.

   Page 96:  “The Flood probably occurred between 2600 bc and 2300 bc, but certainly between 3386 bc and 2256 bc (table 5).” ↩