Researcher sees opportunity in new evolution debate
As the debate over teaching evolution in Kansas public schools continues, Milford Wolpoff is involved in an evolution debate of his own.
Wolpoff, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Michigan, is disputing findings by a team of scientists who say a skeleton found in Chad is an early human.
| KU anthropology museum director seeks support to keep public exhibit space openThe director of Kansas University’s Museum of Anthropology is encouraging museum supporters to fight KU administrators’ decision to close the museum.Mary Adair encouraged the approximately 70 audience members at a lecture Thursday night to write letters to Chancellor Robert Hemenway and David Shulenburger, provost and executive vice chancellor.”We’re working on plans to keep this open as a public exhibit space,” she said. “I can’t make any promises.”KU administrators announced in June that university budget cuts would force the museum’s public exhibit space to close after the annual Indian Arts Show ends Oct. 20. Artifacts in the collection would remain available for researchers.Closing the museum would eliminate five positions and save KU $150,000 a year, officials said.Thursday’s lecturer, Milford Wolpoff, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Michigan, also attacked the decision to close the museum.”I hate to think it’s true that this (museum) and other things like it are gone,” he said. “It’s a tragedy to take this away from the students, the public and the scientists.””Is there really less interest in human beings than there is in bugs?” he added, pointing to the KU Natural History Museum across the street. |
“This was a type of ape,” he told 70 people during a lecture Thursday at the Kansas University Museum of Anthropology.
The 6 million- to 7 million-year-old remains called a sahelanthropus were found by a team of French researchers. Their findings were published last month.
They assert that the skull of the sahelanthropus was similar enough to a human to be an ancestor. The biggest similarity was with a ridge over the brow that was similar to australopithecus, commonly considered by evolutionists to be a human ancestor.
But Wolpoff, one of the best-known paleoanthropologists in the world, uses other evidence to dispute that claim. He said the large mass of neck muscles in the sahelanthropus indicated it walked on four legs, not two, making it an early ape.
“You have big neck muscles that no biped has ever shown,” he said.
While in Lawrence, Wolpoff also sounded off on the evolution controversy that started in 1999 when the Kansas State Board of Education voted to de-emphasize evolution in school science curriculum. The decision later was reversed. He said evolutionists needed to do a better job of teaching science.
“We’ve been successful, but we haven’t been that successful,” he said. “More people believe in creationism than evolution in this country. It’s not clear to me what more we can do because people don’t want to hear (about evolution).”
It’s an issue Bill Wagnon, a State Board of Education member from Topeka, doesn’t expect to go away. Two evolution supporters were ousted in the Republican primary last week by conservative board candidates who support creationism.
With one contested race for the November general election, the split on the board could be 6-4 in favor of evolutionists or evenly divided at 5-5.
Wagnon, who represents Lawrence and supports including evolution in the curriculum, said the debate would likely again play a role in the board’s 2004 election.
“It’s an issue that’s been going on since the ‘Origin of Species’ was published in 1859,” he said.