Lucy and Australopithecus afarensis

Wood, Todd C.  “Baraminology, the Image of God, and Australopithecus sediba.”  Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B 1:6–14.  2011.  Wood's reply to the theological objections raised against his 2010 results.  He sorts the objections into three concerns:  that the data are biased or inadequate; that humans could once have existed as several species; and that putting A. sediba in the human holobaramin is theologically offensive.  He answers each one, and argues that objections about the image of God or the doctrine of salvation are not valid reasons to reject human baraminology.  He proposes testing the "discontinuity hypothesis", the idea that God created organisms in discrete, recognizable groups.  The article uses his warning that casually dismissing a method, because it gives a result that creationists are personally uncomfortable with, is a serious error. ↩

1. 1a.

   “we are personally uncomfortable with would be a serious error”.  The verbatim span is the quoted fragment.  It is quoted as a fragment because that is how it appears in the sentence.  The surrounding clause, casually dismissing baraminology because it gave a result, is paraphrased rather than reproduced. ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Wood says that creationists who dislike including Au. sediba in the human holobaramin, as he says they certainly do, ought to do their own statistical analysis.  He says that selectively quoting experts, or qualitatively listing differences between H. sapiens and Au. sediba, are inadequate refutations. ↩

Rupe, Christopher.  “"Lucy" and the Pygmy Human Hypothesis.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 62:208–227.  2026.  A refereed paper, and the only peer-reviewed item in Rupe's hominin work, published in a creationist research journal; it was accepted on 20 November 2025 and written under Back2Genesis, Cleveland, Ohio.  It compares features of Lucy's skeleton, by a qualitative method, with those of small adult humans such as the Flores "Hobbit" and H. naledi, and proposes that Lucy was a small human from a pygmy population.  The article treats it as the right target for criticism, not Contested Bones, which predates his change of position by eight years. ↩

1. 2a.

   Section Lovejoy's Reconstruction of Lucy's Pelvis, page 209:  Rupe describes the NOVA clip, notes that creationist audiences laugh at it, states the fraud allegation in full, and then writes:  “The allegations of fraud or a manipulated reconstruction do not stand up to scrutiny.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Section Abstract:  His thesis is that Lucy was.  “a genetically isolated small-bodied human, drawn from a pygmy population that lived in the Hadar region of East Africa, during the post-Flood African Humid Period.”  He offers the Pygmy Human Hypothesis explicitly against two creationist alternatives he names and rejects: the Quadrupedal Ape Hypothesis (citing Menton 2003 and Oard 2013) and the Bipedal Ape Hypothesis (citing Brummel 2023). ↩

3. 2c.

   Section Conclusion:  The A. afarensis hypodigm and the genus more broadly.  “includes true human bones that were misclassified—far more than has been previously recognized.  Lucy is just one of many.”  His own term for the mechanism is a "domino effect": once Lucy's pelvis is the reference standard for Australopithecus, every later pelvis resembling it (Sts 14, MH 1, MH 2, H. naledi) gets filed under the same genus. ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 209:  The posterior third of the iliac blade was crushed and bent anterolaterally by almost 90°, carrying the auricular surface with it; articulating the damaged ilium with the sacrum as found rotates the os coxae so that the ischium and pubis point straight out perpendicular to the sacrum, which Rupe calls.  “an anatomical impossibility”.  This is independently consistent with Lovejoy's own statement on camera in 1994, which is quoted elsewhere in this article. ↩

5. 2e.

   Rupe's four points for removing the reconstruction from the load path:  Lovejoy never touched the sacrum, which was found intact with distortion concentrated on one side and correctable by mirror-imaging; Schmid 1983 and Schmid and Häusler 1995 produced independent reconstructions, and his Figure 6A stacks all three; Brassey et al. 2018 produced a digital reconstruction without restoring the damaged sacroiliac joint at all, leaving the gap visible, and still got a human-shaped pelvis, with the dataset public on figshare; and the anterior border of the ilium, which carries the anterior inferior iliac spine (AIIS), is well preserved and was untouched by any reconstruction.  He reports that a member of the 2018 team told him by e-mail that the digital reconstruction was built blind of the earlier ones.  This article endorses this argument. ↩ ↩

Gunz, Philipp et al.  “Australopithecus afarensis endocasts suggest ape-like brain organization and prolonged brain growth.”  Science Advances 6(14):eaaz4729.  2020.  A study of eight fossil skulls of Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy's species, scanned with conventional and synchrotron CT (X-ray scanning that builds a three-dimensional picture).  The authors read brain organisation from the imprints that the brain's folds leave on the inside of the skull, and estimated brain growth by combining new volume estimates with age estimates for two infants.  The method is synchrotron imaging plus geometric-morphometric reconstruction, which is why these figures supersede earlier estimates.  It finds ape-like brain organisation with no features derived toward humans, and protracted brain growth.  The article uses it for the best endocranial volumes available and for its finding on brain organisation. ↩

1. 3a.

   Measured endocranial volumes.  A.L. 288-1 (Lucy):  mean 388 ml, range 365–417.  A.L. 822-1:  382 ml.  A.L. 333-45:  488 ml.  A.L. 444-2:  522 ml.  Adult A. afarensis average:  445 ml, SD 60 (standard deviation, a measure of spread), range 365–526.  DIK-1-1 (Selam), infant:  275 ml corrected, 237 ml unreconstructed.  Comparative sample:  Pan troglodytes adults, N = 240, mean 369 ml, SD 37.  Excluding the geologically younger A.L. 444-2 drops the adult afarensis average to 420 ml. ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   The paper's title states the second finding.  Prolonged brain growth is the human-like half of it; brain organisation is the ape-like half, and it is read from the position of the lunate sulcus (a groove on the brain's surface) on the endocasts rather than from any volume.  This is the finding that the "brain size does not determine humanity" argument does not touch. ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 3c.

   Section Results:  “The beautifully preserved endocast of DIK-1-1 has an unambiguous impression of a lunate sulcus in an anterior (ape-like) position”.  “The micro-CT data reveal clear, previously undetected impressions of unambiguously ape-like lunate sulci”.  “The relevant morphology is not sufficiently preserved to identify the lunate sulcus conclusively in the other individuals studied here”.  Section Introduction:  “Some have argued that structural changes of the brain resulted in a more posterior (human-like) placement of the lunate sulcus on endocasts of australopiths”.  The second quotation is about A.L. 162-28, an adult partial skull from Hadar;  the paper marks that finding as agreeing with Dean Falk's earlier papers and against Ralph Holloway's.  The Introduction's "some have argued" cites Holloway, Broadfield and Yuan, The Human Fossil Record, volume 3 (2004). ↩

De Caro, Liberato.  “Commentary: Human brains have shrunk: the questions are when and why.”  Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 12:1368347.  2024.  A commentary by Liberato De Caro, of the Institute of Crystallography of Italy's National Research Council, on a 2023 study of when human brains shrank.  It gathers the large published samples of living human endocranial volume, the largest being Beals, Smith and Dodd's 1984 survey of 5,288 skulls, and combines three of them into an average of 1,343 cc over 9,948 adults.  The article uses it for the modern human average. ↩

1. 4a.

   Section 1 Introduction:  “Beals et al. (1984) analyzed data on 5,288 crania from 122 different ethnic groups and reported an endocranial volume of 1,349 ± 78cc.”  The same section combines the Beals sample with two others into an average of 1,343 ± 129 cc for 9,948 adults. ↩ ↩ ↩

Wood, Todd C.  “Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin.”  Answers Research Journal 3:71–90.  2010.  A young-earth creationist's statistical study of fossil hominin skulls and teeth.  Wood reanalysed eight already-published cladistic matrices (tables of characters scored for each fossil), by Strait, Grine and Moniz 1997; Strait and Grine 2001 and 2004; Zeitoun 2000; Prat 2004; Smith and Grine 2008; Argue et al. 2009; and Berger et al. 2010, without rescoring any character.  The eight datasets were compiled by conventional paleoanthropologists, not by creationists.  The method has two parts:  baraminic distance correlation, which asks whether two taxa share a pattern of distances to all other taxa, and multidimensional scaling, which projects the distance matrix so clusters can be seen.  Wood holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Virginia and directs Core Academy of Science.  The article uses it as the most rigorous creationist method, and it places Australopithecus afarensis in a cluster with chimpanzees and gorillas. ↩

1. 5a.

   Section Abstract:  The analysis divides hominins into as many as four holobaramins:  genus Homo including Australopithecus sediba; genus Paranthropus; Australopithecus africanus; and a fourth group consisting of Gorilla, Pan, Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus garhi.  Wood says the results.  “tentatively confirm the common creationist claim that fossil hominids can be divided into human and non-human categories”.  and that, in contrast to many creationist claims, H. habilis, H. rudolfensis and.  “most surprisingly”.  Au. sediba belong in the human holobaramin. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   Section Discussion:  Wood writes that the evidence for including Au. africanus within the human holobaramin.  “appears quite weak”.  His reasons, given unprompted:  it appeared as an outlier in three-dimensional multidimensional scaling in both datasets where it correlated positively; bootstrap support for the africanus/rudolfensis correlation was only 62% and 59%; reducing the outgroup eliminated the correlation entirely in one dataset; and Zeitoun's dataset showed significant negative correlation between an africanus specimen and most members of the human group. ↩

3. 5c.

   Section Discussion:  Wood lists three drawbacks of his own analysis without being asked.  All eight datasets are craniodental only.  Many character states are unknown for fragmentary taxa.  And the criteria for choosing baraminologically informative characters.  “remain unknown”.  , which he calls the most serious problem, since two of the datasets he analysed proved uninformative despite being craniodental like the informative ones.  He adds that including postcranial characters might separate H. habilis and Au. sediba out again.  The article's view is that an article citing this method without citing this paragraph is misusing it. ↩ ↩

Sinclair, P., and Todd C. Wood.  “Revising Hominin Baraminology with Medoid Partitioning and Fuzzy Analysis.”  Answers Research Journal 14:451–462.  2021.  A 2021 re-analysis of two hominin character sets by Sinclair and Wood.  The paper exists because another creationist attacked the method:  Reeves argued that baraminic distance correlation is an untested homebrew statistic, and that standard clustering algorithms and Jaccard distances should be used instead.  Sinclair and Wood took the criticism and reran everything with those tools.  The result was a robust cluster of putatively human taxa that appeared in almost every analysis, including Homo naledi and Australopithecus sediba, while the status of Homo floresiensis stayed unresolved.  The article cites it for Wood's placement of A. afarensis with chimpanzees and gorillas under every method tried, and for the four taxa that could not be analysed at all. ↩

1. 6a.

   On the Berger et al. 2010 character set, 69 craniodental characters for 12 taxa, every combination of distance metric, character filter and clustering method produced the same three-cluster partition, with average silhouette widths of 0.58–0.59.  A silhouette width scores how well a taxon fits its own cluster, from −1 (a misfit) to +1.  On Kaufman and Rousseeuw's scale, above 0.5 counts as reasonable to strong clustering.  Forcing Au. sediba into either non-human cluster produced strongly negative silhouette widths (−0.611 into Paranthropus, −0.525 into the other australopiths) against +0.525 in the Homo cluster.  Giving it a cluster of its own dropped the average from about 0.58 to 0.37. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 6b.

   Medoid partitioning of the remaining seventeen taxa at k = 3 (three clusters) gave:  all Homo plus Au. sediba; the extant apes plus Ardipithecus ramidus; and the remaining three australopiths.  H. floresiensis was the one genuinely unresolved taxon:  it shared no significant distance correlation, positive or negative, with any other taxon in any of the eight analyses. ↩

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 sorting of the hominins to score the skeleton below the skull:  239 new characters for 14 taxa, analysed alone and together with skull characters, by Todd Wood and Peter Brummel.  It is the test of the caveat Wood had attached to his skull-only analyses, and for Lucy's species it is the first run that did not put it with the chimpanzees. ↩

1. 7a.

   Page 251, section Abstract:  “Here, we present a new character set of 239 postcranial characters scored for fourteen taxa.” ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 264, table 2:  How often each pair of taxa fell in the same cluster across 44 clustering treatments of the high-relevance skull set, the skeleton set and the combined set.  A. afarensis with H. sapiens:  18%.  With A. africanus:  89%.  With chimpanzee, gorilla and Ardipithecus:  34% each.  Chimpanzee and gorilla with H. sapiens:  0%. ↩ ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 263:  “Australopithecus africanus s.l. clusters with Au. afarensis in 89% of the partitions, but Au. africanus s.l. clusters with Au. sediba in only 46% of our partitions.”  “The first cluster contains chimpanzee, gorilla, and Ardipithecus. The second cluster contains Au. afarensis and Au. africanus s.l. The third cluster contains all Homo taxa and Au. sediba.” ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 7d.

   Page 260:  “Distinguishing which clustering partition was best was difficult because the average silhouette widths for all medoid and fuzzy partitions were similar, ranging from 0.19 to 0.33.”  Page 261:  “giving an average silhouette width of 0.35 for simple matching distances and 0.34 for Jaccard distances”.  “resulting in a drop in average silhouette width to 0.17 for simple matching distances and 0.15 for Jaccard distances”.  Page 264:  “the present taxon sample may still be too small to reveal reliable clusters”.  The page 260 figures are for the skeleton characters alone;  the page 261 figures are for the combined set, two clusters and three fuzzy clusters respectively. ↩

McNutt, Ellison J. et al.  “Footprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania.”  Nature 600:468–471.  2021.  A Nature paper that relocated and re-excavated five footprints at Laetoli site A, whose location had been lost, and compared them with American black bears, chimpanzees and humans, using 3D photogrammetry and laser scanning.  It found that the site A footprints differ from the famous site G prints in foot shape, gait and 3D form, so at least two hominin taxa with different feet and gaits walked at Laetoli at the same time.  The article uses it for the site G footprints and for the evidence that two kinds of biped walked there. ↩

1. 8a.

   “widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage”.  The paper calls the site G trackways this.  Site G was discovered in 1976 by Mary Leakey's team and published by Leakey and Hay in 1979.  No skeletal material is associated with the prints, so attribution to A. afarensis is by elimination, since it is the only hominin known from Laetoli at that horizon. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 8b.

   Five consecutive bipedal footprints at site A, found in 1976 within a 490 m² area containing 18,400 animal tracks, were marginalised because of their "curious affinities with bears," and the site's location was lost until it was relocated and re-excavated in 2019.  The reanalysis compared them with American black bears, chimpanzees and humans and found them more hominin-like than ursid, with a narrow step width supporting a cross-stepping bipedal reading.  But the foot proportions, gait parameters and 3D morphologies at site A are readily distinguished from those at site G, which the authors take as evidence of at least two hominin taxa with different feet and gaits at Laetoli at the same horizon. ↩

Raichlen, David A. et al.  “Laetoli footprints preserve earliest direct evidence of human-like bipedal biomechanics.”  PLoS ONE 5(3):e9769.  2010.  A laboratory experiment in which people walked through a sand trackway, once with an extended-limb gait and once with a flexed-limb gait, and the footprints were compared with the Laetoli prints.  It found that the Laetoli walkers shifted their weight most like the economical extended-limb walking of humans, which the authors call the earliest direct evidence of kinematically human-like bipedalism, meaning the way the legs move in walking.  The article uses it because the result cuts against reading australopiths as ordinary apes. ↩

1. 9a.

   The experiment: humans walked through a sand trackway using both extended-limb and flexed-limb ("bent-knee, bent-hip") gaits, and the resulting footprint morphologies were compared with the Laetoli prints.  The Laetoli hominins' weight transfer matches the economical extended-limb bipedalism of humans, which the authors call the earliest direct evidence of kinematically human-like bipedalism.  This result cuts against the creationist preference for reading australopiths as ordinary apes. ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 9b.

   The paper's own limiting sentence: although the results demonstrate human-like bipedal kinematics by 3.6 million years on the mainstream scale, the Laetoli prints cannot say anything about the locomotor mechanics of earlier hominins. ↩

Hatala, Kevin G. et al.  “Laetoli footprints reveal bipedal gait biomechanics different from those of modern humans and chimpanzees.”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283(1836):20160235.  2016.  A laboratory experiment in which habitually barefoot people and, for the first time, chimpanzees walking upright made footprints that were compared with five Laetoli G prints, with the people's joint angles and foot pressures recorded so that print shapes could be tied to how the leg moved.  It found the Laetoli prints unlike both, with a somewhat more bent leg at heel strike than modern humans and an intermediate arch.  It is the main dissent from the 2010 human-like reading, and it states its own limits.  Mirror:  PMC ↩

1. 10a.

   Section 1. Background:  “For one, we have conducted the first controlled experimental study of modern chimpanzees creating footprints while walking bipedally, which provides a critical reference sample for evaluating competing hypotheses regarding the functional patterns recorded by the Laetoli footprints.” ↩

2. 10b.

   Section Abstract:  “Our results show that the Laetoli footprints are morphologically distinct from those of both chimpanzees and habitually barefoot modern humans.”  “We find that the Laetoli hominin probably used a more flexed limb posture at foot strike than modern humans when walking bipedally.”  Sample sizes, from the figure captions:  five Laetoli G1 prints, 245 prints from 41 habitually barefoot people, and 45 prints from two chimpanzees. ↩ ↩

3. 10c.

   Section 3. Results and Discussion:  “Meanwhile, the proportional toe depths of the Laetoli G1 footprints did not differ significantly from those of chimpanzee footprints”.  “The medial midfoot depth of the Laetoli footprints reflects an intermediate longitudinal arch height”.  The Laetoli and chimpanzee toe depths were both significantly shallower than the human ones (p = 0.037 and p = 0.039);  Laetoli against chimpanzee gave p = 0.366. ↩

4. 10d.

   Section Abstract:  “a limb posture that was slightly but significantly different from our own”.  Section 3. Results and Discussion:  “We do not infer a chimpanzee-like limb posture from the Laetoli footprints but rather one that simply involved slightly more knee and hip flexion at touchdown than is typical of modern humans.” ↩

5. 10e.

   Section 1. Background:  “These trackways are widely considered to have been made by Australopithecus afarensis”.  “although some have suggested that they were produced by members of a different hominin taxon that has not yet been discovered”.  Section 3. Results and Discussion:  “probably but not certainly A. afarensis”.  The paper's source for the different-maker view is Russell Tuttle, David Webb and Michael Baksh, "Laetoli toes and Australopithecus afarensis," Human Evolution 6 (1991):  193–200. ↩

Prabhat, Anjali M. et al.  “Homoplasy in the evolution of modern human-like joint proportions in Australopithecus afarensis.”  eLife 10:e65897.  2021.  A comparative study of joint sizes in a sample of living apes, gibbons and 67 modern humans, with 16 hominin partial skeletons added.  It compares the size of the lower limb joints with the upper limb joints, a ratio that grows as bipedal walking evolves, and finds that Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus and Homo naledi have human-like proportions while the other hominins are more ape-like.  The article uses it because the mainstream's own analysis shows that some of Lucy's limb traits are human-like, and the article prints that as real. ↩

1. 11a.

   The limb joint proportions of A. afarensis, H. erectus and H. naledi resemble those of modern humans; those of A. africanus, A. sediba, P. robustus, P. boisei, H. habilis and H. floresiensis are more ape-like. ↩ ↩

2. 11b.

   The paper's central finding, and the reason for its title: the shared human-like proportions of A. afarensis and modern humans can only be explained by a series of evolutionary reversals under any of the competing phylogenetic hypotheses, so independent evolution (homoplasy) in A. afarensis is the more parsimonious explanation. ↩

Ward, Carol V. et al.  “Complete fourth metatarsal and arches in the foot of Australopithecus afarensis.”  Science 331:750–753.  Feb 11, 2011.  A paper in Science describing a complete fourth metatarsal, a long foot bone, and the arches of the foot of A. afarensis.  Its authors conclude that the foot was functionally like a modern human's and that the species was a committed biped on the ground.  The article uses it because the mainstream describes Lucy's foot in human terms, and the article prints that as a real finding. ↩

1. 12a.

   “the deep, flat base and tarsal facets imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break.”  “was functionally like that of modern humans”.  The authors say this supports the hypothesis that the species was a committed terrestrial biped.  Their reason is that torsion of the metatarsal head relative to its base is a direct correlate of a transverse arch in humans, and that the orientation of the ends reflects a longitudinal arch.  Their wording is "functionally like" modern human feet, not identical to them. ↩ ↩ ↩

Alba, David M. et al.  “Morphological affinities of the Australopithecus afarensis hand on the basis of manual proportions and relative thumb length.”  Journal of Human Evolution 44:225–254.  2003.  A study of the A. afarensis hand based on its manual proportions and the length of its thumb relative to the hand.  Its authors conclude that the thumb-to-hand relationship is fully human, which would have allowed a human-like precision grip.  The article uses it because it is the mainstream description of Lucy's hand in human terms, and the article prints that as a real finding. ↩

1. 13a.

   “an increased thumb/hand relationship that, contrary to previous reports, is fully human”.  The paper says A. afarensis possessed overall manual proportions including this, and that they would have permitted pad-to-pad human-like precision grip.  The paper also states that the conclusion is independent of whether the bones belong to a single individual.  Rupe reads that caveat out, which is the sentence a careless advocate would drop.  The wording is stronger than expected, not weaker. ↩ ↩ ↩

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Human Origins Program.  Human Origins species pages.  2026.  Retrieved Aug 3, 2026.  Section Sahelanthropus tchadensis species page:  “The first (and, so far, only) fossils of Sahelanthropus are nine cranial specimens from northern Chad.”  An online species database from a museum that summarizes the fossils of each species.  It is a secondary source, and the article uses it only for specimen counts, which are the kind of claim such a database is built to carry.

1. 14a.

   Section Australopithecus afarensis species page:  “paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals”.  The page says these remains span about 3.85 to 2.95 million years on the mainstream scale.  Sites named: Hadar, Dikika, Laetoli, and additionally Woranso-Mille, Maka, Fejej, Belohdelie and Koobi Fora. ↩

Johanson et al.  “Description of the AL 288-1 skeleton from Hadar, Ethiopia.”  American Journal of Physical Anthropology 57:403–451.  1982.  The Internet Archive copy of Gibbons's book returns.  “This book is not available to borrow at this time.”  The recovered material is commonly given as 47 bones out of the 207 in a human skeleton, about 23% by bone count.  The provenance of this figure is that it rests on the 1982 Hadar monograph, as described by Meyer et al. 2015 and Kimbel and Delezene 2009, both describing that monograph, plus tertiary sources.  A reconciliation of the 47 bones with the popular 40% figure is reported in Ann Gibbons's The First Human (2006), pages 86–87: Johanson did not count the fragile hand and foot bones, which are seldom recovered.  The article uses it for that bone count. ↩

University of Wisconsin hominin teaching laboratory.  Virtual lab page on the A. afarensis pelvis.  n.d.  Retrieved Aug 3, 2026.  “around 40 percent of the skeleton was recovered, including parts of the lower limb, upper limb, thorax, and mandible”.  “the AL 288-1 skeleton preserves most of the left os coxa together with the sacrum.”  A teaching page from a university lab that works directly from the Lucy specimen (AL 288-1), the skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis.  Because only the left side survives, the right side of every reconstructed afarensis pelvis in any museum is a mirror image.  The article uses it for how much of the skeleton survives. ↩

Masao, Fidelis T. et al.  “New footprints from Laetoli (Tanzania) provide evidence for marked body size variation in early hominins.”  eLife 5:e19568.  2016.  A research article reporting new hominin footprints at Laetoli site S, made by two bipedal individuals, S1 and S2, walking on the same surface and in the same direction as the three hominins at site G.  The stature estimate for S1 greatly exceeds anything previously reconstructed for A. afarensis from skeletons or footprints, and the authors read the results as considerable body size variation, probably sexual dimorphism, within one species.  The article uses it because a large biped walking beside a small one does not fit the popular image of Lucy's species, and because marked dimorphism cuts both ways for the case it argues. ↩

1. 17a.

   Site S lies 150 m south of site G on the same palaeosurface, same horizon, same direction of travel, made by two more bipedal individuals.  Table 2 gives, for individual S1, an average estimated stature of 161–168 cm on the afarensis regression and about 172 cm on the H. sapiens regression, with an estimated body mass of 41.3–48.1 kg.  The authors read this as considerable body size variation and probably marked sexual dimorphism within one species.  Marked dimorphism is an ape-like pattern, not a human one, which is why this evidence cuts both ways in Part 5. ↩ ↩

Marchal, François.  “A new morphometric analysis of the hominid pelvic bone.”  Journal of Human Evolution 38:347–365.  2000.  A morphometric study, meaning one that measures the shape of bones, of pelvic bones from living humans and African apes and from fossil hominids.  It concludes that the pelvis shows an architectural unity related to bipedalism across fossil and living hominids.  The article uses it because the pelvis is structurally a bipedal pelvis, whatever the reconstruction disputes. ↩

1. 18a.

   “a totally different scale”.  The study covers 189 extant human and African ape pelvic bones plus 13 fossil hominid pelvic bones.  Its conclusion is that the fossil-versus-modern-human differences are on a totally different scale from the ape/human difference, showing an architectural unity related to bipedalism.  The paper has two levels of difference: Australopithecus versus Homo, and then H. erectus and Neanderthal versus modern humans. ↩

Comparison of cranial capacities.  n.d.  The figures usually given for the smallest cranial capacities of cognitively normal adult humans fall in the region of 600 to 800 cm³.  That is above the 526 ml top of the measured adult A. afarensis range in the Gunz 2020 measurements, and those human figures are extreme outliers in humans, whose mean is around 1,350 ml.  The article presents this as a comparison the reader can check, not as a measurement it vouches for.  Lucy's 388 ml and her species mean of 445 ml sit below every figure in that region.  The Gunz 2020 organisation evidence is a separate line that no stature or size argument reaches.  The article uses it because it is the decisive comparison on Lucy's brain size. ↩ ↩

Spoor, Fred et al.  “Implications of early hominid labyrinthine morphology for evolution of human bipedal locomotion.”  Nature 369:645–648.  1994.  A CT study of the bony labyrinth, the inner-ear canals that sense head rotation, across living primates and fossil hominids.  The article uses it as its evidence for balance organs, which in Australopithecus and Paranthropus resemble those of the great apes. ↩

1. 20a.

   High-resolution CT of the bony labyrinth across living primates and fossil hominids.  The earliest species to show the modern human morphology is Homo erectus; the canal dimensions in southern African crania attributed to Australopithecus and Paranthropus resemble those of the extant great apes.  The bony labyrinth houses the organs of balance, so this is direct evidence about how the animal held and moved its head. ↩ ↩

Bower, Bruce.  “Evolution's Child:  Fossil puts youthful twist on Lucy's kind.”  Science News.  Sep 23, 2006.  A news report on the 2006 Nature description of the Dikika infant, Selam, quoting the paper's co-author Fred Spoor, the specialist in fossil inner ears.  It is the article's source for the infant's balance canals and hyoid, which the paper's abstract does not describe in that detail.  A journalist's summary of the finding, not the measurements. ↩

1. 21a.

   The paragraphs on the hyoid and on the climbing traits:  “The Dikika girl’s hyoid resembles hyoids of living nonhuman apes, suggesting that she possessed air sacs in her neck as apes do, says coauthor Fred Spoor of University College London.”  “Computerized tomography images of the inner ear show semicircular canals, crucial for maintaining balance, like those of chimps.” ↩ ↩

Rak, Yoel et al.  “Gorilla-like anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis mandibles suggests Au. afarensis link to robust australopiths.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(16):6568–6572.  2007.  A study of the lower jaws (mandibles) of Australopithecus afarensis, comparing the ramus (the upright back part of the jaw) with those of other primates.  Its authors report that the ramus closely matches that of gorillas, a form that modern humans, chimpanzees, orangutans and many other primates do not share.  The article uses it to show that afarensis leans toward the robust australopiths, further onto the ape side, which is a strong result against Lucy being an ancestor and an equally strong result against Lucy being a person. ↩

1. 22a.

   The ramus morphology of an A. afarensis mandible closely matches that of gorillas, a form that modern humans, chimpanzees, orangutans and many other primates do not share, and which also appears in Australopithecus robustus.  The authors conclude that its presence in afarensis and robustus, and its absence in modern humans, casts doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor.  Their argument runs toward the robust australopiths, not toward humanity, and it is homoplasy (a similarity that evolved separately rather than from a shared ancestor) asserted by the describing authors on morphological grounds alone. ↩ ↩

Green, David J., and Zeresenay Alemseged.  “Australopithecus afarensis scapular ontogeny, function, and the role of climbing in human evolution.”  Science 338:514–517.  2012.  A study of the shoulder blades (scapulae) of the Dikika juvenile A. afarensis, compared with fragmentary adult australopith shoulder blades.  Its argument is developmental:  the traits in question change as modern humans grow up but stay stable in apes.  The article uses it for its claim that A. afarensis had ape-like shoulder development. ↩

1. 23a.

   Both scapulae of the Dikika juvenile display traits characteristic of suspensory apes, as do the fragmentary adult australopith scapulae.  The argument is developmental:  those traits change through modern human ontogeny (growth from juvenile to adult) but stay stable in apes, so the similarity of the juvenile and adult fossil morphologies implies that A. afarensis development was ape-like. ↩ ↩

Melillo, Stephanie M.  “The nature of the DIK-1-1 scapula, and its implications for hominin shoulder evolution.”  PNAS 113:E14.  2016.  An alternative interpretation of the same specimen, the DIK-1-1 scapula, which Green and Alemseged described in 2012.  Printed here because the article should not present a contested reading as settled. ↩

DeSilva, Jeremy M. et al.  “A nearly complete foot from Dikika, Ethiopia and its implications for the ontogeny and function of Australopithecus afarensis.”  Science Advances 4(7):eaar7723.  2018.  A study of a nearly complete foot of a juvenile A. afarensis from Dikika, Ethiopia, dated to 3.32 million years ago.  The juvenile already had many adult bipedal (two-legged walking) features, but also traits linked to big-toe mobility, which the authors read as selection for grasping with the foot as a juvenile.  The article uses it for its claim that a juvenile foot was built to grip. ↩

1. 25a.

   The 3.32-million-year-old juvenile foot DIK-1-1f preserves all the tarsals and the bases of all five metatarsals.  It already has many adult bipedal features, but also medial cuneiform traits associated with increased hallucal (big toe) mobility and a more gracile calcaneal tuber, which the authors did not expect from the adult morphology and which they read as selection for juvenile pedal grasping.  This is the same-taxon counterweight to the fourth-metatarsal argument in Ward 2011, and any presentation of one without the other is presenting half the foot evidence. ↩ ↩

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.  A synthesis by three young-earth scientists, one of them Wood, that combines the statistical results with cultural evidence such as fire, tools and burial.  Its Table 2 sets out the placements of six earlier young-earth treatments beside its own, and its text gives the authors' verdict on Lucy's species and their caution about the phrase "ape kind." ↩

1. 26a.

   Page 73, table 2:  "Summary of hominin fossil assessments from prominent YEC books and studies."  Seven columns:  Lubenow (1992, 2004);  Hartwig-Scherer (1998);  Cuozzo (1998);  Rupe and Sanford (2017);  Bergman, Line, Tomkins and Biddle (2020);  Sinclair and Wood (2021);  the present study.  Rows as printed:  Ardipithecus ape in every column that states one;  A. afarensis ape except Rupe and Sanford, "mixed";  A. sediba "mixed" (Rupe and Sanford), "ape" (Bergman et al.), "human" (Sinclair and Wood), "uncertain" (present study);  other australopiths and the robust australopiths ape in every column;  H. habilis and H. rudolfensis "mixed" for Lubenow, Rupe and Sanford and Bergman et al., "Possibly mixed" for Hartwig-Scherer, "human" for Sinclair and Wood and the present study;  H. floresiensis human in the four columns that state one;  H. naledi human for Rupe and Sanford, Sinclair and Wood and the present study;  Mid-Pleistocene Homo, H. erectus, Neanderthals human in every column that states one, except Cuozzo's "ape" for H. erectus;  Denisovans human for Rupe and Sanford, Bergman et al. and the present study.  Note 4 says Sinclair and Wood's statistics did not cluster floresiensis with humans, but they "considered the species human based on evidence from cultural artifacts". ↩

2. 26b.

   Page 74:  “We encourage creationists to therefore be cautious and avoid the term “ape kind,” which implies there is only one such created kind. Nevertheless, it seems very clear that Au. afarensis and Au. africanus are not human.” ↩ ↩

Menton, David et al.  “Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin: Discussion.”  Answers Research Journal 3:153–158.  2010.  A published reply to Wood's 2010 hominin paper, by three creationists, in the same journal.  It objects on three grounds:  that Scripture makes man a single specially created kind; that the two known specimens of A. sediba are too few and too immature to score reliably; and that the cladistic characters are the biased opinions of evolutionists.  The article grades these objections, calling one good and one self-defeating. ↩

1. 27a.

   The discussion opens with Psalm 8:4–7, 1 Corinthians 15:39 and Acts 17:26, arguing that Scripture makes man a single specially created kind, distinct from all animals and of one blood.  The article's assessment is that the objection is true and irrelevant.  Nothing in Wood's analysis denies that humans are a separate created kind.  The analysis is about which fossils belong to it, and no verse assigns a character matrix. ↩

2. 27b.

   Their sample-size objection:  Au. sediba rested at the time on two published individuals, MH1 a juvenile male with a nearly complete skull and partial skeleton, and MH2 an adult female with maxillary teeth, a partial mandible and a partial skeleton, so primate sexual dimorphism plus juvenile status makes character scoring unreliable.  The article's assessment is that this objection is good and survives.  It is the same one Tim White made in the mainstream literature about drawing conclusions from a subadult, and Wood's own paper concedes the fragmentary-data problem. ↩

3. 27c.

   Their third objection quotes a dictionary definition of cladistics and says the similarities scored are the biased opinions of evolutionists.  Assessed in Part 8 as self-defeating. ↩ ↩

4. 27d.

   The paper quotes Tim White, a paleontologist, who says.  “given its late age and Australopithecus-grade anatomy, it contributes little to the understanding of the origin of genus Homo”.  and quotes Chris Stringer, an anthropologist, who says.  “putting Australopithecus sediba into Homo would require a major redefinition of that genus”.  .  Both come by way of Balter 2010 in Science's news section, not from the men's own publications.  The article does not reproduce either quotation in its body, because under this site's own citation rule a second-hand quotation is a defect to fix, not a citation to copy. ↩

Reeves, Colin R.  “A critical evaluation of statistical baraminology: Part 1 — statistical principles.”  Answers Research Journal 14:261–269.  2021.  Section Abstract:  The conclusion is that the methods of Wood and co-workers.  “are based on a shaky understanding of statistical principles, and that their use ought to be abandoned”.  Section Conclusions:  His itemised objections are these:  the assumption that all characters are equal.  “appears to be untested”.  ; the choice of distance metric is rarely discussed against the nature of the variables; the usual metric gives equal weight to the presence and the absence of a character without justification;.  “BDC is not based securely on statistical principles, and the question of true statistical significance of the 'correlations' is sidestepped”.  ; multidimensional scaling has a better pedigree but suffers from metric subjectivity and information loss; and it is unclear the bootstrap is correctly applied.  A critique by a creationist statistician of statistical baraminology, the method that Todd Wood and co-workers use to group fossils by how alike their characters are.  It appeared in Answers in Genesis' own research journal.  Reeves calls the goal "worthy" and the datasets "excellent and painstaking—even heroic", and says his worry is that misapplied statistics "may only give ammunition to unfriendly critics of creationist research."  He also notes that evolutionists misapply statistics too.  He recommends ordinary cluster analysis with defined significance tests, in R, which is what Sinclair and Wood then did.  The article takes from it that no baraminology result may be reported as a measurement. ↩

Logos Research Associates.  Employment chronology.  n.d.  A career chronology built from the Logos Research Associates fellow page and the author note on an Institute for Creation Research article.  It gives his education and posts: a B.A. in biology from SUNY Geneseo in 2009; research associate at the FMS Foundation from 2011 to 2018 with John Sanford; a geology graduate student at Loma Linda University from 2018 to 2024; a PhD in earth sciences in February 2024, on the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone; and president of Back2Genesis since January 2025.  The article uses these dates to show that his hominin research was done in 2011–2018, not during the doctorate. ↩

WGBH/PBS NOVA.  In Search of Human Origins, Part 1, 'The Story of Lucy'.  1994.  The full transcript of the first part of the NOVA television series In Search of Human Origins, which tells the story of Lucy.  Don Johanson narrates, and Owen Lovejoy speaks on camera about how he reconstructed the broken pelvis.  The article uses it because the transcript records what Lovejoy said about the fused pieces, and what the narration said about the plaster copy and the reconstruction. ↩

1. 30a.

   Lovejoy says on camera that when the two parts of the pelvis were put together, one part had pressed so hard into the other that it broke it into individual pieces, which then fused in that position during fossilisation, making the two bones fit together so well that they are.  “in an anatomically impossible position.” ↩

2. 30b.

   Johanson's narration in the same segment says that the perfect fit was an illusion which made Lucy's hip bones seem to flare out like a chimpanzee's, that Lovejoy decided he could restore the pelvis to its natural shape, and that he made a copy in plaster rather than tamper with the original.  The narration adds that.  “he cut the damaged pieces out and put them back together the way they were before Lucy died.”  It calls it a tricky job, says the pieces then fit.  “like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle,”.  and says the resulting hip angle.  “looks nothing like a chimps, but a lot like ours.” ↩

Tay, Joel.  “The skeletons in evolution's closet.”  Creation 41(4):40–43.  Jul 25, 2019.  An interview in Creation, the magazine of Creation Ministries International, with the two co-authors of Contested Bones, Christopher Rupe and John Sanford, a geneticist and former Cornell University professor.  It was printed in October 2019 and first published online on 25 July 2019, updated 12 August 2019.  The article uses it as the best available statement of the position the book takes, in Rupe's own words. ↩

1. 31a.

   On A. afarensis, describing the book's argument: prominent members of the paleo community.  “have argued persuasively in favour of afarensis as a jumble of human (Homo) and ape-like (Australopithecus) bones.”  Nowhere in the interview does he suggest that Lucy herself is human. ↩

2. 31b.

   Summarising an agreement with mainstream critics, the authors were.  “able to agree with the experts that the Hobbit is a modern human that suffered from the results of inbreeding and that 'Ardi' (Ardipithecus ramidus) appears to be nothing more than an extinct ape.”  On his own 2026 criterion, based on the anterior inferior iliac spine (AIIS), that extinct ape is a human, as the 2010 Lovejoy paper cited elsewhere in this article explains.  Note also that Creation Ministries International attached its own footnote to the piece stating that it.  “regards this as an issue open to debate, and so it does not officially endorse any particular position”.  on the inbreeding-pathology model, the largest creationist publisher to give the book a platform declining to endorse its central explanatory mechanism, in the article itself. ↩

Rupe, Christopher.  “Paleoanthropology: Falsifying the Evolutionary 'Ape-to-Man' Story.”  YouTube.  Mar 3, 2025.  A recorded lecture of 74 min 39 s that Rupe gave at the Midwest Creation Fellowship in Illinois, uploaded to YouTube by his organisation, Back2Genesis, on 9 March 2025.  A 15 min 47 s clip cut from it circulates as "Lucy's Fossil Hip Looks Human Because It Is."  The article uses the lecture to date his change of view and to show how he handles a quotation from Leslie Aiello.  Rupe published an erratum for the lecture in the video description, correcting swapped accession numbers on two skulls, which the article calls good practice, and worth recording. ↩

1. 32a.

   At 45:05:  Roughly at this point he says he has a theory about Lucy that no creationist has proposed, that he has held it for several years, and that he first stated it in public days earlier at a Midwest Creation Fellowship meeting, dating the first public statement of the Pygmy Human Hypothesis to late February 2025.  At 48:44:  Roughly at this point he says he formerly believed the Lovejoy reconstruction was fraudulent, and describes buying a cast of the un-reconstructed fossils and satisfying himself that the repair was necessary.  Machine-transcribed; reported as content, not as words. ↩

2. 32b.

   At 15:15–16:22:  Roughly at this point he quotes Leslie Aiello and then tells the audience that she would not agree with the creationist reading, because by.  “australopithecines are like apes”.  she means creatures that walked upright and were human-like from the neck down.  The Aiello source itself was not opened, so nothing is attributed to her here; the point is about Rupe's handling, which is the opposite of quote-mining. ↩

3. 32c.

   At 43:29–44:55:  Roughly at this point he argues that the ape-like skulls and the human-looking postcrania come from different localities and different stratigraphic levels with no physical association, so there is no way to determine which skull belonged on which body.  Machine-transcribed.  That argument is fair about A.L. 444-2 and Kadanuumuu and is not available against DIK-1-1. ↩

4. 32d.

   At 23:43–25:56:  Roughly at this point he treats A.L. 333 as the first-family site on a hillside and Lucy as a separate find from a separate locality.  Machine-transcribed, and the specimen counts he gives at that point are among the figures this article declines to reproduce, because automatic transcription mangles numbers. ↩

Thomas, Brian, and Chris Rupe.  “Busting the Myth about Lucy.”  Acts & Facts 54(5):18.  Aug 29, 2025.  A short co-written article of about 550 words in Acts & Facts, the magazine of the Institute for Creation Research.  It states the older creationist view that the collection attributed to Lucy mixes human and ape bones, citing Contested Bones (2019), and it contains a factual error about where Lucy was found, which Rupe does not make when speaking for himself.  The article uses it because it restates the position Rupe later gave up, with the book as its footnote. ↩

1. 33a.

   The piece's conclusion, verbatim:  “First, some clearly human fossils got lumped into a collection of bones attributed to Lucy's species.  Second, clearly ape fossils got lumped into that same collection.”  Its footnote 4 cites Contested Bones, 2019, p. 113, for the proposition that some researchers recognise that the collection includes both human and ape pieces.  So this is the book-era position with the book as its source, published three months before the Creation Research Society Quarterly paper states a different one. ↩

2. 33b.

   The piece states that Lucy was.  “a partial skeleton of assembled bone fragments extracted from a large, mixed bone bed in 1974.”  The statement is false.  The large mixed bone bed at Hadar is A.L. 333, a different locality, with around 200 catalogued specimens of at least 13 individuals.  A.L. 288 produced one hominin individual.  See Kimbel 2009, cited elsewhere in this article, and Rupe's 2025 lecture. ↩

Lovejoy, C. Owen, and Melanie A. McCollum.  “Spinopelvic pathways to bipedality: new evidence from the pelvis of Ardipithecus ramidus.”  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365:3289–3299.  2010.  A review by two researchers, an anthropologist (Lovejoy) and a cell biologist (McCollum), arguing from the development and anatomy of the spine and from the fossil record of Ardipithecus ramidus that the old picture of an ape-like bent-hip, bent-knee walk leading to upright walking was in error.  The article uses it because the sentence on the anterior inferior iliac spine (AIIS), a bony protuberance on the pelvis, is the one Rupe quotes. ↩

1. 34a.

   Verbatim, from a discussion of Oreopithecus:  “What distinguishes the AIIS in hominids from those in apes is not its protuberance (those of Gorilla are often very prominent), but rather its emergence from a novel, separate physis, a hominid adaptation that is almost certainly associated with dramatic expansion of iliac isthmus breadth.”  Rupe quotes this accurately.  The parenthetical gloss "(humans)" that he attaches to it is his own addition and is not in the source. ↩

2. 34b.

   "Hominid" in Lovejoy's usage is a clade, not a species.  The paper's whole subject is Ardipithecus ramidus, and the citation attached to that very sentence is the 2009 Science description of the Ardi pelvis, which reports this feature in Ardi.  John Hawks, writing on the Ardi pelvis on 6 October 2009, notes that the AIIS is prominent in Ardipithecus and that the similarity of Oreopithecus, Ardipithecus and Australopithecus in these pelvic features suggests the anatomy may have been the generalised form. ↩

Budinsky, Donny.  “The Famous Missing Link: Has the Lucy debate been settled?”  Truth In Research / Standing For Truth Creation Ministry.  Aug 2025.  An 8-page PDF by Donny Budinsky, a young-earth creationist who says he has argued the pygmy view himself in past debates.  He concludes that there are still too many problems with the Pygmy Human Hypothesis for creationists to adopt it.  The article uses it as the best-supported published criticism of Rupe on Lucy, because both of its factual premises were independently confirmed for this article, and it came from inside the creationist movement. ↩

1. 35a.

   Budinsky extends the Little Foot test to Ardipithecus, which also has an anterior inferior iliac spine (AIIS), and reports Rupe's reply that Ardi's pelvis was crushed.  “roadkill”.  , together with the counter that Lucy's was crushed too.  The reply is about a reconstruction; the criterion is about a growth plate. ↩

2. 35b.

   “It cannot be argued that Little Foot is a mixed species.”  His conclusion:  “There are still too many challenges and inconsistencies to 'the pygmy human hypothesis' for it to be adopted by Creationists.” ↩

Lovejoy, C. Owen et al.  “The Pelvic Girdle and Limb Bones of KSD-VP-1/1.”  The Postcranial Anatomy of Australopithecus afarensis: New Insights from KSD-VP-1/1, 155–178.  Springer.  Edited by Yohannes Haile-Selassie and Denise F. Su.  2016.  Chapter 8 of a 2016 Springer book on the skeleton below the skull of Australopithecus afarensis, based on the KSD-VP-1/1 specimen; this chapter covers its pelvic girdle and limb bones.  The article uses its abstract on the pelvis and sets it beside how Rupe presents the same abstract. ↩

1. 36a.

   Verbatim from the abstract:  “The pelvis is essentially of modern aspect, and differs little from that of modern humans save in a few minor respects, such as, for example, size of the auricular surface and acetabulum.” ↩

2. 36b.

   Two lines later, the same abstract states that the pelvis's general shape confirms the overall Australopithecus pattern of platypelloidy, a flattened, transversely wide pelvic inlet, which is the australopith signature and not the modern human pattern.  Rupe's slide renders the first sentence as "essentially of modern human aspect," drops "save in a few minor respects," and omits this sentence entirely. ↩

New Creation Staff.  “Creationists Take St. Louis: Creation Research Society Conference 2025.”  New Creation Blog.  Aug 27, 2025.  A blog post from New Creation, the outlet of Todd Wood's organisation, reporting Rupe's 2025 conference talk at the Creation Research Society conference in St. Louis.  The article uses it because it reports, from Todd Wood's own organisation, a criticism of Rupe's method. ↩

1. 37a.

   The report calls it.  “his controversial talk”.  , states that Rupe.  “argues that Lucy is fully human”.  , and characterises his method:  “Rupe argues that other creationists have focused on minutiae to distinguish between australopithecines and humans.  He advocates for a more general approach, focusing less on anatomical details and more on the overall similarity of bones.”  Coming from the people who built the character matrices, the last sentence is a criticism. ↩

Lague, Michael R.  “Another look at shape variation in the distal femur of Australopithecus afarensis: implications for taxonomic and functional diversity at Hadar.”  Journal of Human Evolution 42:609–626.  2002.  A 2002 study of the lower end of the thigh bone in Australopithecus afarensis, comparing two Hadar femur fragments, the large A.L. 333-4 and the small A.L. 129-1a.  It measured their size and shape against ten living hominoid reference samples (apes and humans) and found the two fossils more alike in overall shape than either is to any living hominoid group.  The article uses it because Rupe does not cite it, and it is the direct quantitative answer to his A.L. 129-1 argument. ↩

1. 38a.

   Method: randomisation and canonical variates comparing the large A.L. 333-4 with the small A.L. 129-1a against ten extant hominoid reference samples.  Results: the size difference.  “can be easily accommodated within most hominoid taxa at the subspecific level”.  ; the shape difference.  “does not differ statistically from any average pattern of femoral shape dimorphism observed among living hominoids”.  ; and.  “the two Hadar fossils appear to be much more similar to one another in overall shape than either specimen is to any extant hominoid group.”  Rupe does not cite this paper, and it is the direct quantitative answer to his A.L. 129-1 argument. ↩

Meyer, Marc R. et al.  “Lucy's back: Reassessment of fossils associated with the A.L. 288-1 vertebral column.”  Journal of Human Evolution 85:174–180.  2015.  A paper by four anthropologists, from Chaffey College (Meyer), New York University (Williams) and the American Museum of Natural History (Smith and Sawyer), that reassesses the nine vertebrae associated with Lucy and where each one belongs in her spine.  It was received on 30 September 2014 and accepted on 13 May 2015.  The article calls it the strongest evidence that exists for foreign material inside A.L. 288-1, and the only such evidence; it is entirely mainstream. ↩

1. 39a.

   A.L. 288-1am, an upper thoracic neural arch, is 12% smaller than the T6 where a T2 should be larger, a discrepancy of about 23% against the expected within-column pattern, while Lucy's other thoracic vertebrae follow that pattern closely.  Four non-metric characters present in Papio and Theropithecus and absent in hominoids: a neural-canal furrow on the inferior margin, an inferior articular process salpinx, a laminar trigon, and a transverse-process ventral crest.  A discriminant function analysis classifies it as Theropithecus with 100% probability, and it falls inside the 95% confidence ellipse for Theropithecus on the principal-components plot.  Taxon assigned: Theropithecus darti, the dominant large monkey at Hadar in the relevant submembers; T. brumpti is ruled out on geography. ↩ ↩

2. 39b.

   Johanson et al. 1982, p. 432, had described the element as.  “polished or even 'water-worn' and is the only specimen from A.L. 288 to display these characters.”  The monograph published no figure of the specimen, and casts do not reproduce surface texture, which the authors give as the reason it went unnoticed for forty years. ↩

3. 39c.

   AL 288-1 came out of the KH-1s deposit, a sandstone sheet read by Yemane 1997 as a sinusoidal stream channel plus crevasse-splay deposit spilling across a floodplain.  The unit is normally thin; Campisano 2007 measured it at 3 m thick where AL 288-1 was found.  Meyer et al. say this indicates.  “a locus of increased deposition with high potential for taphonomic displacement of a small bone.”  That is a real concession, from the mainstream, and this article prints it in full before answering it. ↩

4. 39d.

   Their own summary: the reassignments.  “simply refine earlier work and confirm that the remainder of the A.L. 288-1 axial skeleton was correctly attributed to A. afarensis.” ↩

5. 39e.

   The positive evidence.  A.L. 288-1ae, -1af and -1ag physically articulate with one another consecutively, confirming Cook et al. 1983; -1ag articulates with -1ad; -1ad articulates with -1ac.  The revision produces a continuous articular series of thoracic vertebrae from T6 to T11.  Both -1ag and -1ad show Scheuermann's kyphosis (an abnormal forward curve of the spine), with matching osteophytic lipping (bony edge growths) at the corresponding apophyseal margins. ↩ ↩

Kimbel, William H., and Lucas K. Delezene.  “'Lucy' Redux: A Review of Research on Australopithecus afarensis.”  Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 52:2–48.  2009.  A review of 301 years of research on Australopithecus afarensis, the species Lucy belongs to, by two researchers who worked on it.  Kimbel curated the Hadar collection for decades, directed the Institute of Human Origins, and in December 1977 was Donald Johanson's research assistant at the Cleveland Museum, where the lumping decision was made, treating the Hadar and Laetoli fossils as one species.  It is a participant's account, which is both its value and its bias.  The article uses it for how the 1973–74 Hadar finds were recovered, why the 1976 label said Homo, and which way the 1978–79 change ran. ↩

1. 40a.

   Page 5:  Verbatim quotation describing the 1973–74 Hadar hominins, including Lucy:  “Although all of these specimens were surface finds, their excellent state of preservation and unprecedented degree of association of skeletal parts testified to highly favorable depositional and taphonomic contexts.”  Their reason for trusting the association is an unusually high depositional rate at Hadar relative to other East African fluviolacustrine hominin sites, plus abundant and well-preserved associated fauna.  The first clause is the concession a creationist is entitled to press, and this article prints it. ↩

2. 40b.

   Page 8:  On the 1976 attribution, the decision to assign the bulk of the Hadar and all of the Laetoli material to Homo rested on the contrast with the later robust australopiths, plus the weakness of the case for A. africanus outside South Africa.  In the authors' words:  “the analytical focus was less on characters shared uniquely by the relevant samples and later representatives of the Homo lineage than on 'specialized' ('robust') features they lacked in common.”  Philip Tobias dissented at the time and called them A. africanus. ↩

3. 40c.

   Page 9:  Kimbel's own account of the December 1977 sessions:  “Once the decision was made to treat the entire combined sample as a single species, the links between the Hadar and Laetoli hominins and the Homo lineage, though tenuous from the outset, were further weakened, as a primitive craniodental profile emerged as the pooled sample's dominant morphological signature.”  Two A.L. 333 specimens drove it, A.L. 333-1, an adult face, and A.L. 333-45, a partial calvaria, which together gave a cranial gestalt closer to a large male chimpanzee or a female gorilla.  This directly contradicts the motive the ICR piece attributes to the reassignment. ↩

4. 40d.

   Page 5:  “Hominin fossils were recovered in the first field season; these are portions of what were thought to be a single individual’s lower limb remains (A.L. [Afar Locality] 128-1: proximal femur; A.L. 129-1 a, b, c: distal femur, proximal tibia, proximal femur)”.  The first field season was 1973.  Lucy, A.L. 288-1, was found in the 1974 season. ↩

5. 40e.

   Page 34:  “Bipedal features of the A. afarensis femur include the presence of a bicondylar angle in both adults and juvenile specimens”.  “The presence of a bicondylar angle in both juvenile (e.g., DIK-1-1; Alemseged et al., 2006) and adult specimens is of particular importance since the feature develops as an ontogenetic response to the adoption of bipedal behavior”.  The bicondylar angle is the slant of the thighbone that brings the knee under the body. ↩

Alemseged, Zeresenay et al.  “A juvenile early hominin skeleton from Dikika, Ethiopia.”  Nature 443:296–301.  2006.  A description of DIK-1-1, nicknamed 'Selam', a partial skeleton of a roughly three-year-old early hominin recovered from a single sandstone block at Dikika, about 10 km from Hadar.  Its skull and postcranial skeleton were preserved together in one individual.  The article uses it because it is the control experiment for the mixture argument.

1. 41a.

   The abstract's own summary says that the skull shows most features diagnostic of the species, that the hyoid bone has.  “a typical African ape morphology”.  , that the foot and lower limb give.  “clear evidence for bipedal locomotion”.  , and that the scapula is.  “gorilla-like”.  with.  “long and curved manual phalanges.”  The combination in one three-year-old from one block is what makes it the control experiment. ↩

Bruxelles, Laurent et al.  “A multiscale stratigraphic investigation of the context of StW 573 'Little Foot' and Member 2, Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa.”  bioRxiv.  2018.  A study of the rock layers (stratigraphy) that hold StW 573, 'Little Foot', the most complete Australopithecus skeleton yet found, in the Member 2 deposit of the Silberberg Grotto at Sterkfontein.  It weighs two rival accounts of when Member 2 formed: one says it began to accumulate around 2.8 million years ago and is confined to the Silberberg Grotto, and the other says it began before 3.67 million years ago and extends into the Milner Hall.  Published as a preprint in 2018 and in volume 133 of the Journal of Human Evolution in 2019, it finds the skeleton and the surrounding fauna articulated and free of extensive biogenic or post-depositional modification.  The article uses it for that deposit evidence.

1. 42a.

   The deposit shows.  “the presence of a complete and articulated Australopithecus skeleton with no observable biogenic modification”.  ; StW 573 is.  “the only hominin represented in the current Member 2 assemblage”.  , and the surrounding fauna is likewise articulated and free of extensive biogenic or post-depositional modification.  The article reads this as a death-trap accumulation, not a stream deposit, the taphonomic opposite of the sandstone AL 288-1 came from. ↩

Crompton, Robin et al.  “Bipedalism or bipedalisms:  The os coxae of StW 573.”  Journal of Anatomy 248:163–183.  2026.  A statistical comparison of the hip bones of Little Foot and StW 431 with modern humans, apes and other fossil pelves.  It finds the two Sterkfontein hips more human-like than Sts 14 or Lucy, and argues for two species and more than one kind of bipedal walking.  The article uses it because Little Foot's hip, attached to its own ape-like skull, sorts with humans more closely than Lucy's does. ↩

1. 43a.

   Section Abstract:  “StW 573 and StW 431 from Sterkfontein Member 4 are consistently classified together with modern humans.”  “Although clearly exhibiting the classic "basin shaped" bipedal pelvis, Sts 14 (also from Sterkfontein), AL 288-1 Australopithecus afarensis, MH2 Australopithecus sediba and KNM-WT 15000 occupy a position more peripheral to modern humans, and in some analyses are assigned to an indeterminate outlying group.”  StW 573 is from Member 2 and StW 431 from Member 4. ↩

Johanson, Donald C., and Maurice Taieb.  “Plio—Pleistocene hominid discoveries in Hadar, Ethiopia.”  Nature 260:293–297.  Mar 25, 1976.  A 1976 report in Nature on the hominid fossils found at Hadar, Ethiopia.  The paper reports remains of twelve hominid individuals from Hadar.  The article uses its abstract to check a creationist article's facts: the paper did say that the two genera coexisted, and the reassignment did happen.

1. 44a.

   “The collection suggests that Homo and Australopithecus coexisted as early as 3.0 Myr ago.”  The abstract's last sentence.  The ICR piece quotes the first clause and drops the date, which does not change the meaning.  The quotation is genuine; what it meant is set out in Kimbel and Delezene 2009. ↩

Nalin, Ronny.  Review of Contested Bones.  2018.  The most detailed published review of Contested Bones, by Ronny Nalin, who holds a PhD and is affiliated with the Geoscience Research Institute.  The review comes from inside creationism and is substantially critical of the book.  The article uses it to show that a sympathetic creationist critic still rejected the book's claim about the Australopithecus sediba fossils, while crediting the book for showing that the debate inside paleoanthropology is real. ↩

1. 45a.

   Nalin's criticisms are these.  The claim that the Au. sediba fossils are a mixture of individuals from different species is contradicted by the original excavation reports, which describe the remains in close and anatomically credible association.  He also notes that Berger et al.'s original publications appear to contain no diagram showing the spatial position of individual fragments, which is a fair criticism of Berger.  He says the authors are.  “lumpers”.  about Homo species but.  “splitters”.  about the ape/human line.  They accept the Cerutti Mastodon site and the Trachilos footprints without cautionary notes, though both are heavily disputed, and they underemphasise that an anatomically modern human cranial configuration is poorly documented in the Pliocene record. ↩ ↩

2. 45b.

   Nalin credits the book for accessibility, for letting the paleoanthropologists speak for themselves, and for showing readers that the debate is real and.  “not just the fabrication of two fringe dissidents.”  The article says this credit is deserved and repeats it: the book's core thesis, that the hominin fossils are genuinely and fiercely contested inside the field, is confirmed independently at several points in the article, Part 5 most of all. ↩

Rak, Yoel et al.  “One hominin taxon or two at Malapa Cave? Implications for the origins of Homo.”  South African Journal of Science 117(5/6).  2021.  A 2021 paper about the two Malapa Cave individuals, MH1 and MH2, that argues from the mandibular ramus (the vertical branch of the lower jaw).  Ritzman et al. 2016 read the same anatomy the other way, so the question is still open.  The article uses it to show that a two-taxa reading of the Malapa material now has mainstream support.

1. 46a.

   The authors argue from the mandibular ramus that MH1 and MH2.  “represent two separate genera:  Australopithecus and Homo.”  The article's point is that this means two individuals of different taxa at one site, not one chimeric skeleton. ↩ ↩

Raichlen, David A., and Adam D. Gordon.  “Interpretation of footprints from Site S confirms human-like bipedal biomechanics in Laetoli hominins.”  Journal of Human Evolution 107:134–138.  Jun 2017.  A short reply by the authors of the 2010 Laetoli experiment, turning to the site S prints found in 2015.  Its title states its conclusion, the human-like reading, a year after the 2016 study disputed it. ↩

Stern, Jack T., and Randall L. Susman.  “The locomotor anatomy of Australopithecus afarensis.”  American Journal of Physical Anthropology 60(3):279–317.  1983.  A long anatomical study of the Hadar skeletons and the Laetoli prints by two Stony Brook anatomists, and the main secular case that afarensis still spent real time in trees.  Young-earth writers cite it for an ape-like Lucy, but its authors also read the species as an upright walker on the ground and a link between apes and humans. ↩

1. 48a.

   Section Abstract:  “It is demonstrated that A. afarensis possessed anatomic characteristics that indicate a significant adaptation for movement in the trees.” ↩

2. 48b.

   Section Abstract:  “Other structural features point to a mode of terrestrial bipedality that involved less extension at the hip and knee than occurs in modern humans”.  The authors call this conclusion more tentative than the one about climbing. ↩

3. 48c.

   Section Abstract:  “In our opinion, A. afarensis from Hadar is very close to what can be called a "missing link."” ↩

Mitchell, Elizabeth.  “Laetoli footprints revisited.”  Answers in Genesis, News to Know.  Nov 12, 2011.  A short young-earth news commentary by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell of the Answers in Genesis staff, responding to a 2011 conference report on the Laetoli trackways.  It states the young-earth reading that people, not australopiths, made the prints. ↩

1. 49a.

   “Despite many evolutionists’ insistence that the footprints belong to an extinct human ancestral ape called Australopithecus afarensis, the footprints appear to belong to modern humans, albeit barefoot ones.” ↩

Reno, Philip L., and C. Owen Lovejoy.  “From Lucy to Kadanuumuu: balanced analyses of Australopithecus afarensis assemblages confirm only moderate skeletal dimorphism.”  PeerJ 3:e925.  2015.  A reanalysis of how much the males and females of A. afarensis differed in size, using the Template Method, which evaluates several skeletal sites at once to enlarge the sample.  It finds only moderate dimorphism, similar to modern humans, and shows that a rival method inflates dimorphism when several measurements come from one partial skeleton at the edge of the species' size range.  The article uses it because it disagrees with the marked dimorphism read from the 2016 site S footprints, and it prints both papers. ↩

1. 50a.

   Balanced analysis of the A. afarensis assemblages confirms only moderate skeletal dimorphism, the human-like pattern, which directly contradicts the reading of marked dimorphism from the site S footprints.  Both papers are recent, and this article prints both rather than choosing.  The same paper is the source for the statement that the A.L. 333 assemblage contains at least nine geologically contemporaneous adult individuals. ↩

Collard, Mark, and Bernard Wood.  “How reliable are human phylogenetic hypotheses?”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97(9):5003–5006.  2000.  A genuine controlled experiment that tests craniodental cladistics, the method that sorts species into family-tree groups (clades) by shared features and is the standard method for placing fossil hominins.  That method had never been externally validated, because for fossils there is no independent answer to check against, so the authors applied identical methods to equivalent craniodental data from two groups of living higher primates, the hominoids (apes) and papionins (baboons, mangabeys and macaques), whose molecular phylogenies are known and robust.  The article uses it because it shows that skull-based trees can give strong support to relationships that the molecular trees reject. ↩

1. 51a.

   Measured results.  The hominoid analysis correctly placed Hylobates as the earliest-branching hominoid, but grouped Homo with Pongo in one clade and Pan with Gorilla in the other, and the false Pan–Gorilla clade was supported by four more putative synapomorphies (shared features treated as evidence of common descent) than the true Pan–Homo clade.  In the bootstrap tests, a resampling check of how firmly each clade is supported, none of the clades supported at 70% or above was compatible with the molecular cladograms: a false (Gorilla, Pan, Pongo) clade at 95%; a false (Gorilla, Pongo) clade at 73%; in the papionins a false (Cercocebus, Macaca, baboon) clade at 98%; and from the hominoid qualitative data a clade incorrectly linking Gorilla and Pan at 92%. ↩

Menton, David.  “Did Humans Really Evolve from Apelike Creatures?”  Answers in Genesis;  chapter 3 of The New Answers Book 2.  Feb 25, 2010.  A popular chapter on the fossil hominins by David Menton, an anatomist writing for Answers in Genesis.  It states the standard young-earth reading of Lucy's species as a knuckle-walking ape with ape hands and feet, and rests it on Stern and Susman 1983. ↩

1. 52a.

   Section Making Man out of Apes:  “These apes are known to be long-armed knuckle-walkers with locking wrists. Both the hands and feet of this creature are clearly apelike.” ↩

Richmond, Brian G., and David S. Strait.  “Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor.”  Nature 404:382–385.  2000.  A comparison of the lower end of the radius, the forearm bone at the wrist, across apes, monkeys and fossil hominins.  It found knuckle-walking wrist features in Lucy and in an older Australopithecus anamensis bone and read them as inherited from a knuckle-walking ancestor.  Young-earth writers cite it for a knuckle-walking Lucy;  its authors drew the opposite conclusion about her ancestry. ↩

1. 53a.

   Section Abstract:  “Here we present evidence that fossils attributed to Australopithecus anamensis (KNM-ER 20419) and A. afarensis (AL 288-1) retain specialized wrist morphology associated with knuckle-walking.”  “suggests that bipedal hominids evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor that was already partly terrestrial.” ↩

Kivell, Tracy L., and Daniel Schmitt.  “Independent evolution of knuckle-walking in African apes shows that humans did not evolve from a knuckle-walking ancestor.”  PNAS 106(34):14241–14246.  2009.  A survey of how often the supposed knuckle-walking features of the wrist occur, and when they develop, in apes and monkeys.  It found them missing in some knuckle-walkers and present in primates that do not knuckle-walk, and concluded that chimpanzees and gorillas knuckle-walk in two different ways that arose separately.  It is the main answer to Richmond and Strait 2000.  Mirror:  PMC ↩

1. 54a.

   Section Abstract:  “Contrary to previous expectations, features long-assumed to indicate knuckle-walking behavior are not found in all African apes, show different developmental patterns across species, and are found in nonknuckle-walking primates as well.”  “The presence of purported knuckle-walking features in the hominin wrist can thus be viewed as evidence of arboreality, not terrestriality”. ↩

WGBH/PBS NOVA.  Owen Lovejoy's Lucy Pelvic Reconstruction, a 52.8-second video clip.  1994.  A 52.8-second clip, 640 x 360, excerpted from the 1994 NOVA episode In Search of Human Origins, carrying a burned-in caption that names the source.  Creationist reposts circulate it as Fixing Lucy's Pelvis with a Power Saw.  At roughly 16–19 seconds a hand-held motorised rotary cutting tool with a small disc, throwing dust, cuts a pale cast fragment held between the fingers.  Later frames show plaster pieces being reassembled on a table, then the finished reconstructed pelvis mounted on a vertebral column beside a modern human pelvis.  The narration says a plaster copy was made precisely to avoid cutting the original.  The article uses it because the popular title is visually accurate about what is on screen, and the clip shows no cutting of the original fossil. ↩

Bechly, Günter.  “[title to be added].”  Evolution News.  2022.  A 2022 post on Evolution News from the Discovery Institute, in which Günter Bechly argues that the reconstruction procedure for AL 288-1 was never properly documented in the technical literature.  He says that Johanson, Lovejoy and Coppens 1982, AJPA 57 (1982): 403–451, and Tague and Lovejoy 1986, J Hum Evol 15 (1986): 237–255, do not describe it, and that the only technical account is a 1979 conference abstract.  The claim is presently sourced only to a blog post, so the article prints it as an open question and not as a finding.  The article treats the underlying point as a legitimate criticism that is hard to answer, because the reconstruction was shown on television before it was documented in the technical literature. ↩

Lippard, Jim.  “Lucy's Knee Joint:  A Case Study in Creationists' Willingness to Admit their Errors.”  The Talk.Origins Archive.  Jun 12, 2003.  A skeptic's history of one creationist claim, quoting it from its first printing and recording which of the writers who repeated it corrected it.  It is hostile to its subjects;  the article relies on it for the claim's wording, which it quotes, and for its tally. ↩

1. 57a.

   “Sixty to seventy meters lower in the strata and two to three kilometers away”.  “Only under questioning did [Johanson] admit that the knee was found over a mile from Lucy. To the best of our knowledge this admission has not appeared in print”.  “At least eighteen creationists have made this bogus claim.”  “Only three (Menton, Morris, Sharp) have issued public corrections or clarifications.”  The first two quotations are Lippard quoting Tom Willis, Bible-Science Newsletter, 1987, on a question-and-answer session after Johanson's lecture at the University of Missouri on 20 November 1986. ↩

Johanson, Donald C., and Maitland A. Edey.  Lucy:  The Beginnings of Humankind.  Simon and Schuster.  1981.  Johanson's popular account of the Hadar expeditions, written with a science journalist.  It tells the finds season by season, which is why it settles when and where the 1973 knee and the 1974 skeleton were found. ↩

1. 58a.

   Page 155:  “This was a distal femur—the lower end of a thighbone—also very small.”  Page 159:  “The knee joint was found near the end of the first field season”.  Chapter 7 is titled "The First Hadar Field Season:  The Knee Joint";  chapter 8, "The Second Hadar Field Season:  Some Hominid Jaws and Lucy." ↩

Research dossier for this article.  n.d.  The research dossier kept for this article, with its list of sources that could not be reached. ↩