Re-writing Human Evolution—Again?

Today’s announcement in the journal “Science” of an alleged new hominid species—supposedly an evolutionary transition between modern humans and an ape-like ancestor—is drawing the attention of the world’s media.¹

“Sediba” is the new designation issued by a group of paleontologists of an Australopithecine. “Sediba” is actually the fossil remains of a few individuals (including an almost-complete skeleton) that were found in South Africa. As creatures that possessed a small brain, they supposedly date back to almost two million years.

What were the conditions in which the bones were preserved? Do some secular scientists already disagree about Sediba’s classification—whether this fossil really should be classified (like the famous “Lucy”) in the genus Australopithecus, or perhaps be better designated as Homo instead?

Interestingly, some media outlets are reporting that the story of human evolution now has to be redrawn.2 That observation begs the question: why has so much been so wrong in the evolutionists’ recounting of their story of human evolution, and now it has to be redrawn? Will some science textbooks be seen as obsolete and have to be tossed?

We’ll have more answers on Saturday morning, as over the next few hours, AiG will be looking more carefully into the research papers on “Sediba” (the print magazine was released earlier today, Friday). As we offer something of a preliminary comment on Saturday, we should note that we do not have access to the actual bones; furthermore, only one group of scientists (to our knowledge) has studied them, and who knows how other paleontologists will interpret the bones once they are allowed to examine them?

As creationists, we can be confident of one thing: the Creator God created humans distinct from all animals, and we were made in His image and not from an ape-like creature (Genesis 1). By the way, that truth will be presented in a striking new exhibit inside our Creation Museum to be unveiled in a few weeks.