Why isn't their more fossil evidence of pre-human hominids?

Question

I am not a religious nut trying to down the theory of Evolution.
I am a firm believer.

I am just curious as to why there are not hundreds of thousands of skeletons of these other species in the Homo genus. Can they be destroyed through erosion or some other means?

Answer 1

Because thousands, if not millions, of years have passed between today and when older hominids were around. That is enough time for fossilization to occur but not all dead ancient hominids become fossilized. So not everything that died millions of years ago will become fossilized in stone. Fossilization is not common place and happens very infrequently which is why there are very few, by comparison, hominid fossils and even fewer complete fossils.

Answer 2

This is a very good question as it tells us that science has not fully explained the processes to the masses under which a fossil is formed. Here is an excerpt from the PBS web site that explains how a fossil is formed.


Becoming a Fossil:


The study of how life evolved would be impossible if not for the history that is told in the fossilized remains going back billions of years. Scientists have described about 250,000 different fossil species, yet that is a small fraction of those that lived in the past.

The oldest fossils are remains of marine organisms that populated the planet's oceans. When they died, the plants and animals were buried by mud, sand, or silt on the sea floor. Land animals and plants usually decomposed or were eaten, and mainly the hard parts -- teeth, bones, shells, or wood -- were preserved.

Fossils can be formed in several ways. Buried bone and shell contain tiny air spaces into which water can seep, depositing minerals. Reinforced by these mineral deposits, bone and shell can survive for millions of years. Even if the bone or shell dissolves, the mineral deposits in the shape of the body structure remain.

Besides rock, fossils may be found as the result of an organism being entombed in ice, tar (like the famous La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles), or amber, in which ancient insects have been found, wonderfully preserved. Rare but highly informative are fossils created by a sudden event, like a volcanic eruption, that traps living things or, in the famous case in Laetoli, Ethiopia, footprints of human ancestors millions of years old.

Fossil remains come to the attention of scientists when they are exposed at Earth's surface. Erosion, land movements, or excavations often have revealed important fossil finds.

Answer 3

You've hit on it. Bone is incredibly fragile. It needs a special set of circumstances in order to last for very long. It can be destroyed by wet conditions, animals, bacteria, weather, and the chemicals in a soil. We find so many more dinosaur skeletons than hominid because dinosaurs were around for a hell of a lot longer than hominids have been: over 160 million years versus 1.5 or 2.5 million years. We probably have absolutely no evidence of most of the species of dinosaurs that existed.

I work as an archaeologist in the US, and, while we do find plenty of bone, both animal and human, most of it isn't in great condition. Particularly in the places I've worked, mostly the northeast and the midwest, the wet soil makes it just crumble. It might've lasted a thousand or two years, but it really wasn't going to make it another millennium, let alone the hundreds of thousands of years that we're talking about for prehuman hominids.

Answer 4

Different environments can affect the preservation of human bone. I've excavated and supervised the excavation of nearly 1000 human burials from all time periods. I've seen burials that are only 150 years old look far worse than burials that are 2000 years old. I've seen burials that were merely feet away from one another but one exhibited excellent preservation while the other was a poorly preserved. Soil chemistry plays a big role. Too alkaline or acidic and you have nothing but teeth left. If you have fluctuating water tables, the constant dampening and drying can fragment and dissolve bone. Animals and plants work to further scatter and destroy bone. Erosion can uncover bone so that they suffer the elements (wind, rain, sun). Older individuals with osteoporosis and younger individuals with small, undeveloped bone are even more susceptible. If a hundred years can give bad preservation, imagine what 1 million would do.

Answer 5

Try this experiment:

Put something that is good condition somewhere on your property where it will not be in the way, and moved around, take a good close up photo and put it in a safe place.

Forget about it. In a year or so, get the photo and go find the object, if it still exists, and consider the condition. Imagine that you left it out for, oh, say, 2.5 million years. In what condition do you think it would be?

Now you have some idea how difficult it is to find evidence of our ancestors.

Jim D

Answer 6

If you want to find a fossils that are 2 million years old, just to make a point, several things have to happen. You need to have a bones or skeleton buried in a place where it will be quickly covered by sediment to keep other animals or bacteria from eating or decomposing it. If it manages to be buried in a place then it must stay buried for 2 million years.

Then it needs to be exposed by erosion. Areas that are suitable for fossils that were deposited 2 million years ago are rare. You have to search these very limited areas to find exceedingly rare fossils.

Answer 7

As has been covered by others answering this question, and as cited in your question, various conditions mitigate against fossilization and the consequent potential for preservation, in ways that are easy to discover with current technology.

As technology advances and as more scientists enter the field, it is entirely possible that 'hundreds of thousands" of comparatively intact early hominid remains or other evidence of their existence will be found.

At present there exists enough circumstantial evidence to describe the evolution of man in the ways with which we are familiar. The circumstantial evidence supporting the theory meets generally accepted criteria with respect to scientific methodology, and the conclusions are generally accepted by experts as consistent with observable data.

That does not mean that future findings will not knock today's ideas about evolution into a ****** hat. But that's the beauty of science. It is based on what is known rather than what is believed. The nature of science is plastic, and desirous of conforming to hard data.


Will science fine stronger links between early hominids and ourselves? if the history of science is any guide, the answer is yes. But it is possible that data evidence will not be found and interpreted in our lifetime.

Answer 8

If you have ever hiked through the forest, you will find few, if any, skeletons of the dead animals. Why? Because they are eaten! Even beavers gnaw on bones for the life-giving nutrients. Only homo sapiens and the Neanderthals buried their dead; hence, natural forces, including animals, would have removed any skeletons. From far back in time, the only skeletons in evidence are from people/animals caught in quick sand, floods, volcanic eruptions, etc.; something that would preserve the body/skeleton.

Answer 9

I have wondered about this myself and yes I believe in evolution. It's strange how there is thousands of skeletons found of dinosaurs but we only found a few of pre-human hominids. I wished I would have asked my anthropology teacher but i'm guessing it is because hominids walking upright were a new species and not as widespread as other animals were. Also, humans bones are fragile and not as durable as the bones of dinosaurs or other animals so they wouldnt have been preserved easily. This would be even more so for early bipeds such as australopithecus that were much smaller than today's humans.

Answer 10

Some hominids had similar tools & belongings as ours, generally found in some rudimentary form near buried bodies. Also, we are starting to have more tales of Big Foot & similar creatures in many parts of the world, so far with mainly anecdotal evidence. Someday something more concrete may be found. Sometimes humans are born with parts that they have in common with apes & ape-like hominids that ordinarily are not associated with modern humans. I think these are known as "throw backs," not like a fish gets thrown back in the pond if it's too small to be of value, but rather that it's a return to some trait that we or our ancestors used to have. Example: I was born with baby toenails that stick straight up. As a young adult, these nails fell out, but now they've all grown in again in the same weird form. Both my father & my grandmother on my father's side & a young girl my age in the same town had the same type nails as toenails that normally you might expect to see on animals, but not on humans. I'm just glad that not of us were born with tails. Lucky for me, too, classmates & other girls at Girl Scout camp seemed to think it was something to envy & not a matter for teasing.